"US Campaign Aims to Deter Illegal Aliens," by Elliot Spagat - AP (San Diego, CA), 18 Aug 2005
The U.S. government is launching two new media campaigns to try to stop immigrants from attempting clandestine boarder crossings and trying to sneak children into the country in car trunks, engines and even gasoline tanks....
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced some of the ads Thursday at San Diego's San Ysidro border crossing, the nation's busiest.
The Spanish-language public service announcements call attention to what authorities say is the alarming practice of smugglers stuffing children into vehicle compartments that could become death traps.
Their release coincided with the launch of another media campaign by the U.S. Border Patrol to call attention to the dangers of clandestine border crossings.
Those television spots, which began airing last week in the Mexican state of Michoacan, and were due to begin this week in U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. The campaign unveiled Thursday will target cities closer to California's Mexican border....
Migrants who heard or watched the anti-smuggling ads at a Tijuana, Mexico, shelter Wednesday night said they were accurate, even powerful. But they vowed to return to the United States anyway....
Authorities are especially worried about the risk for children. Inspectors once found a 14-year-old girl strapped under the metal bars of a car seat, and also discovered a young boy hidden inside a gas tank, his jeans and T-shirt soaked with fuel. On another occasion, a 3-year-old girl had been hidden inside a pinata....
The campaigns come as heightened border enforcement in and around San Diego and El Paso, Texas, over the last decade has forced migrants to take bigger risks, whether crossing through unforgiving Arizona deserts in the summer or stuffed inside vehicle dashboards.
The Mexican government has published a comic-book style booklet warning of the dangers of border crossings, but the publication has been criticized by some in the United States because it also shows safe ways to cross.
It's interesting to consider the role that public perceptions play in the flow of illegal immigration. It's not necessarily a question of people simply being desperate. People will pay remarkable amounts of money to smugglers to get to the US, Europe, or other developed countries - money, you figure, that might be used to start a business, improve a farm, etc. Instead, they see the best return on their money as coming from working abroad, even in an underground economy, and even if they risk their lives in the attempt to cross borders. I've always wondered whether inflated expectations of the prosperity to be found elsewhere (and perhaps excessively pessimistic attitudes about the state of things at home) might not lead some people to make questionable decisions about their best interests.
Also see:
"Over 40 Per Cent in Mexico Would Live in US," by Victor Schodolski - the Chicago Tribune, 17 Aug 2005
More than 40 percent of Mexicans in a new survey would opt to immigrate to the United States and more than 20 percent of them would enter this country illegally given the opportunity, a study released Tuesday disclosed.
The survey by the Pew Hispanic Center also found that the desire to immigrate to the U.S. cuts across a wide socio-economic swath, with the poorest of Mexicans sharing the urge to move north with high school and college educated fellow countrymen.
"Contrary to what people might expect, the desire to immigrate is not restricted to the poor," said Roberto Suro, the director of the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center....
The report is based on polls of Hispanics conducted in Mexico and the United States. The questions also touched on attitudes toward immigrants and U.S. immigration policy.
The survey of 1,200 people in Mexico was conducted twice, in February and again in May....
The study can be read at the Pew Hispanic Center Web page.
Added 19 Aug 2005:
"Illegals Dying at Record Rate in Arizona Desert," by Dennis Wagner - USA Today, 19 Aug 2005
The passage for hundreds of Mexicans every month begins after dark in Altar, a town along the Sonora highway south of Sasabe, Ariz. Coyotes - smugglers - drive carloads of immigrants north on dirt roads to the barbed wire fence that separates Mexico from the USA.
The immigrants, known as pollos (chickens), carry almost nothing: Each has a knapsack, water and a trash bag to sleep on, hide under or wear as a poncho. Many from Mexico's interior cannot comprehend the desert, where summer temperatures reach 115 or higher. Despite Spanish-language media campaigns warning of death, they are spurred by dreams of employment - and by the knowledge that millions have made it before them.
Entering the Tohono O'odham wilderness, they dodge motion sensors, video cameras, helicopters and agents with infrared goggles. They hike under starlight along zigzag trails, getting stabbed by cholla cacti and clawed by thorny scrub. In the heat of the day, they hunker down beneath palo verde trees.
When something goes wrong, says Border Patrol spokesman Gustavo Soto, the coyotes are ruthless: "They are abandoning people in the farthest extremes of the desert. It is a business to these smugglers, and they don't care if they leave people behind (to die)...."
"Survivors Tell of Horror on Sunken Boat," by Edison Lopez - AP (Manta, Ecuador), 19 Aug 2005
Last week, 113 men, women and children boarded a tiny fishing boat with dreams of a new life in the United States. On Thursday, only nine were believed alive after clinging for days to debris in the Pacific Ocean, watching their companions let go — one by one — and slip below the water....
The group assembled before sunrise on Aug. 12 in Esmeraldas, 125 miles north of Manta. The 65-foot fishing boat was built for only 10 people, Ecuador's navy said, but the smugglers loaded 113 aboard for the journey to Guatemala, expected to last six or seven days.
The passengers then planned to continue north by land from Guatemala, crossing Mexico and entering the United States illegally in search of jobs that paid decent wages. The trip to Guatemala cost them $10,000 apiece, relatives said....
"Border Troubles Divide US, States," by Nicole Gaouette (in Washington) - the Los Angeles Times, 18 Aug 2005
The decision by the governors of Arizona and New Mexico to declare states of emergency along their troubled borders with Mexico has embarrassed the Department of Homeland Security, which scrambled Wednesday to defend itself from charges that it wasn't doing enough to combat the crime and violence associated with drug smuggling and illegal immigration....
Last Friday, responding to pressure from border communities, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson declared an emergency in four counties that he said had been "devastated by the ravages and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, destruction of property and death of livestock." On Monday, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano followed suit in four counties, declaring through a spokeswoman that the federal government "has not done what it needs to do and has promised to do" to deal with the problem....
Added 3 Sept 2005:
"Border Has Record Illegal Immigrant Deaths," by Arthur H. Rotstein - AP (Tucson, AZ), 3 Sept 2005
A record 415 people have died trying to cross the border illegally from Mexico in the past 11 months, surpassing the previous high of 383 recorded in fiscal year 2000, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Washington said Friday....
Some of the increase reflects a change in the way Tucson Border Patrol officials are counting the dead. In late June, they began including some remains found by other law enforcement agencies but not previously counted.
Even accounting for the change, Arizona's 228 recorded deaths so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, were more than in all of fiscal 2004, said Border Patrol spokesman Luis Garza.
He attributed the increase to unprecedented heat and an eastward shift by smugglers to a more mountainous and treacherous stretch of desert east of the Baboquivari Mountains and the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation....
For context as to what a $10,000 smuggler's fee means to a Brazilian -- and to how potential Brazilian emigrants must see their economic prospects at home -- see:
"Wannabe Sweepers Try to Outrun Poverty," by Andrhei Khalip - Reuters (Rio de Janeiro), 2 Sept 2005
Daniele Nascimento ran 1.2 miles barefoot on a sun-scorched asphalt runway in the hope of getting a coveted job as municipal garbage collector in Rio de Janeiro.
The unemployed 19-year-old woman, who lives in a shack in a hillside slum, had lost her only pair of running shoes. But she chose to compete in the endurance test along with thousands of other contenders anyway....Around 385,000 people had applied to compete in this year's municipal contest, which offers just 1,200 openings with a monthly salary of about $210, transport coupons, food stamps, a healthcare plan -- and a distinctive orange uniform.
With a third of Brazilians, or about 60 million people, living on $1 a day, that is a golden opportunity....
By the way, I didn't come across this item in the world news. It was one of the top items in Yahoo!'s 'Weird News' section, along with "Sales Up in Japan of Cheese Insulted by Politician" and "One Reason to Say Yes to Lap Dancing." That says something about troubling where the issue of poverty sits on our collective radar screen.
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