On May 16, the NY Times published an article titled “From India, Brazil and Beyond: Pandemic Refugees at the Border,” detailing how–in part due to the Wuhan virus and in part due to federal policy–the US has become a magnet for the world’s “economic refugees.”
According to international law, to qualify as a refugee, a person must be fleeing his or her home country due to “persecution, war or violence.” Financial and economic reasons do not qualify. Yet the distinction is now being lost as hundreds of thousands of migrants across the world have either lost their livelihoods to the Chinese Wuhan virus or simply decided they’ll get a better deal at a newly welcoming United States. Now those migrants are on the move, headed west and north, and the will to stem the tide appears lacking, in Western Europe and especially in the United States.
So far this year, 13,000 illegal migrants have landed in Italy–the gateway to Europe. That’s three times more than the same period last year. Those numbers are serious enough, yet in the United States, the numbers are exponentially greater to the point of being staggering: in April alone, 178,622 illegal migrants were apprehended by the Border Patrol, the highest number in 20 years. And that’s just the ones who were caught. Officials estimate that this fiscal year, perhaps another 200,000 gave gotten through unmolested, maybe more.
It doesn’t much matter nowadays whether an illegal is captured or not. The result is much the same: most simply stay here forever, having reached their final destination.
The government does attempt to send some back, pursuant to CDC Title 42 policy, but Mexico often will not accept non-Mexican or non-Central America natives. Those are simply allowed to remain here, awaiting future court hearings that may take place but most probably will not. They are the new Americans, looking forward to a mass amnesty that will remake American society and the American electorate.
The numbers of “extra-continental” migrants are growing constantly. According to official data just released, 30 percent of all families apprehended in April came from countries other than Mexico and Central America, compared with just 7.5 percent in April 2019. In recent months, agents have stopped people from more than 160 countries. In March, 12,500 Ecuadoreans were encountered. In January, nearly 4,000 Brazilians were caught, along with more than 3,500 Venezuelans. The Border Patrol has had to expand the numbers of languages it speaks, adding to the traditional Spanish such languages as Arabic, Haitian Creole, Hindi, and Portuguese.
Not all of these “economic refugees” are poverty stricken. Many are sufficiently well-heeled to afford air travel from their home countries. According to the Times:
From India and elsewhere in Asia, they embark on Phileas Fogg journeys. Some reported taking buses in their hometowns to a big city, like Mumbai, where they boarded planes to Dubai and then connected through Moscow, Paris and Madrid, finally flying to Mexico City. From there, they embarked on the two-day bus ride to reach the Mexico-U.S. border.
“We’re hearing back home that the new president is facilitating entry. I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.” — Debt-ridden Brazilian migrant fleeing creditors
At the border, those migrants who have aimed at the Yuma, Arizona, area–a favorite crossing point–simply walk through gaps in the border fence or wall or in places where the fence is merely waist high, a mere token barricade from a government not really serious about protecting its borders.
The NY Times article is available on the Times website.
The Camp of the Saints.