Article: Tighter Borders

Tighter borders won't help the desperate

Only a real reversal of economic trends will stem the tide of illegal crossings.

By G. Jefferson Price III
The Christian Science Monitor

Altar, Mexico – President Bush raised the odds Monday night against Delfredo Garcia Martinez who hopes soon to join as many as 2,000 people coming through here every day on their way to try to enter the United States illegally.

But it probably won't stop Mr. Martinez and tens of thousands of others trying to cross the border.

The 37-year-old Honduran set off on foot from his home two months ago with $20 in his pocket. He said he begged for more money along the way as he and a friend, Abel Quintanilla Leyva, walked, hitched rides, and jumped trains to get this close to the border with the US.

Twice, on the way through Guatemala to Mexico, different bandits tried to rob him and then beat him when they discovered he had no money. Now he and Mr. Leyva are working to raise enough money to pay one of the guides, known as "coyotes," to take them on the perilous journey through the Mexican and Arizona deserts to reach America.

The coyote charge - about $1,600 per person for a 60-mile journey from here to the border - is likely to increase now that Mr. Bush has decided the National Guard should help bolster security along the US border with Mexico. But in the order of perils illegal immigrants face as they stream from here to the border, getting caught by US authorities is pretty mild.

First of all, there's the alternative for most people who immigrate illegally, which is to stay home and nearly starve in appalling economic conditions.

Faced with that alternative, the hundreds of thousands of people who immigrate illegally every year from Mexico and through Mexico from Central America, have paid up to an estimated $18,000 to get this far and across; others, like Martinez, have risked their lives.

From here, the last leg to the US border and beyond, to places such as Phoenix, is a tortuous journey across the desert where the air temperature reaches more than 110 degrees F. and the sunbaked ground temperature reaches as high as 120 degrees.

As if that weren't enough, the migrants are prey to bandits and traffickers on both sides of the border.

Read the entire article

• G. Jefferson Price III is a former foreign correspondent and editor with The Baltimore Sun. He travels now on behalf of Catholic Relief Services.

Tags: Guatemala, Immigration, Immigrants, Mexico, News

Posted by elcanche at May 17, 2006 08:07 PM