“There are so many bodies being recovered that funeral homes are calling for help,” said Eagle Pass Fire Department Chief Manuel Mello III, referring to the horrific number of migrant drownings he witnessed in the US-Mexico border. “We do a daily body recovery. It’s very traumatic for my staff.”
The journey ahead for these South American migrants is not easy. According to Pastor Héctor Silva, who runs shelters in the northern Mexican border city of Reynosa, there are 12,800 migrants waiting for a small number of entries in Reynosa alone, as they struggle to survive with limited facilities and supplies. Otherwise, they will have to choose “further and more dangerous routes to come to the United States.”
In July, the US Border Patrol made more than 181,000 apprehensions on the southern border. Those arrested are in luck, as nearly 750 migrants have died at the border alone this fiscal year, a new record that exceeds last year’s total by more than 200, according to CNN. Despite such a fateful journey ahead, millions more follow in the footsteps of their predecessors each year and try their luck chasing the American dream across the border.
In the endless partisan rivalry in America, few politicians care about the fate of illegal migrants who risk their lives to cross rivers or be harassed at the border.
Even if some are blessed with fortune and make it to the United States, they may also find, surprisingly, that their American dream continues to elude them. In September of last year, a video that swept the Internet shows US Border Patrol agents using whips and horses to drive away defenseless Haitian migrants, even though their arrival at border entry points and their Asylum requests were legal. Many were shocked by the stark contrast between the ferocious officers brandishing their whips and shouting on horseback, and the helpless, drenched migrants fleeing into the water in only their flip-flops. This scene reminds people of nothing but America’s long and dark history of brutal slavery.
Over the years, illegal immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and other Central and South American countries and Caribbean countries such as Haiti have fled their homelands and come to the United States at risk of their life However, when America loses its mind solving the migration problem for decades, it should realize that no matter how many resettlement plans are introduced, the problem can never be solved, because the America is only suppressing the symptom without treating the condition.
Since the introduction of the “Monroe Doctrine” in 1823, the United States has intervened in South America more than 30 times, forcibly exporting American-style democracy, practicing economic plunder, and even inciting to the subversion of the regime. Many South American countries ended up as sources of raw materials and cheap labor controlled by the United States, and have long been caught in the conundrum of political turmoil, economic stagnation, and social division.
In addition, the United States imposes lengthy and unreasonable sanctions against South American countries, significantly undermining local economic development and nation-building. Let’s take Venezuela as an example. Its government revenues have fallen by 99 percent compared to before the sanctions, and its public services have nearly collapsed due to lack of funding, according to Alena Duhan, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on human rights.
The South American countries, perhaps aptly described by the expression, are “so far from God and so close to the United States.”
Author Xin Ping is an international affairs commentator who writes regularly for CGTN, Xinhua and Global Times.
