Coming to America Is Often Deadly

Two recent news pieces about unlawful migration to the United States have wildly different factual set-ups and, unfortunately, very similar and deadly consequences.

First came the late-January story of the Patel family from India (dad, mom, 11-year-old daughter, 3-year-old son) who tried crossing into the United States from Canada. They walked, in the dead of winter, across the open and unforgiving landscape of Manitoba. They didn’t make it. They froze to death.

I’ve previously blogged about unlawful migration across the Northern border. (See here, here, here, here, here, here.) It’s more common that folks are trying to get into Canada from the U.S. because Canada, broadly speaking, is more generous towards asylees. (Cf. here.) But the route is the same. As are the dangers: death, frostbite.

Then came the story just days later: one single survivor of a boat filled with migrants coming from the Bahamas to the United States. The boat capsized, killing everyone but Juan Esteban Montoya Caicedo. Among the dead: his sister.

Like the Patels, Juan Esteban and his sister were not citizens of the country where they landed before migrating. The Patels came to Canada from India. Juan Esteban and his sister came to the Bahamas from Colombia. Both cohorts traveled with family. Both relied on smugglers who had followed the same routes and the same passages before. Both undertook incredibly treacherous journeys that resulted in death.

I don’t have a grand point in juxtaposing these two tales. They just haunt me in different ways. One pulls at my greatest fear — watching a loved one drown — the other pulls at my lived experience of what it’s like to be outside in North Dakota in the dead of winter. I wonder what students would think if presented with these two stories side-by-side.

-KitJ