From the desk of Chief Editor
‘’You can change your friends but not your neighbours’’ , it is a popular saying that is turning into a total nightmare for the USA. Mexico, or the United Mexican States or the central America and it is bordered by the USA to the north and is a continental neighbour of USA.
It has now become the most busiest route for the smuggling activity that involves people seeking asylum in the United States of America away from their native countries. Mostly, who are caught belong to north Indian regions of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pardesh and belong to bourgeois class, who are victims of unemployment and income conflicts sustaining in the Indian society. These people who are willing to take all the risks are often caught, trapped, deported or are detained and taken into the foreign custody including the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and even in Mexico.
These people not only face physical abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and the main is financial abuse. One of the immigrant just died along with another person in Canada, who belonged to Punjab and her name is Prabhleen Kaur daughter of Gurdial Singh in Surrey. She was 21 years old and hailed from Punjab’s district Jalandhar. She was killed on Saturday or Sunday sometimes. She was a native of village Chitti near Lambara. Another dead body was in the same building of a male found by the police and through the Indian Embassy’s assistance Chandigarh police informed the father of the girl about the incident, family is in shock.
Above mentioned is only one example of migration and this girl was working in Canada, while was on student visa and not allowed to work. This transatlantic journey to the United States involves crossing of multiple countries before they reach Mexico and cross the final border to enter into their destination country via illegal means. The journey in itself is fraught with risks and is followed by even adverse consequences.
The scenario builds up when people who enter the states are caught without having with them the required documentations or visa or enter without an inspection. Their whole life is at stake and it means loss of all the investment they had put into committing this journey and shattered dreams of them and their families waiting to receive a package of dollars or pounds back home. Ending up in detention or being kept into custody for undeclared period can be traumatic.
Even in England people on student visas or entered their illegally are sleeping in trash bins or dumpsters, which is very inhuman and these people go there to earn or get settled in those countries or to make their lives better.
Why take the risk?
The number of such cases have been shooting up and there can be a whole unbiased outlook to why these people are willing to put everything at stake or at risk and jump into something so risky, where these people don’t know the future and there is uncertainty. The most common approach can be blame gaming and assuming that the border crossers are actually the victims and the agents are the culprits, but in reality the border crossers are aware about the circumstances and they are doing wilfully and knowingly having the knowledge of the consequences. The trend has raised eyes upon the agents and people who helped these people sneak and cross the border. Recently Balwan Sharma of Panipat, Haryana was taken into custody by Indian authorities and police administration for sending people to the United States of America, Canada and Australia illegally; the matter however can be deeply analyzed by taking everything into consideration and by reading between the lines..
When Ankit Sharma, a 16 yrold boy from Karnal lodged the complaint against Balwan Sharma, it brought light upon many such cases from other Indian states. According to statistics 8997 Indian citizens were apprehended while trying to cross the U S border in the year 2018 (Released by US Border Patrol). The data reflects upon the mob mentality of people who were risking it all for their personal intention of growth, desire fulfilment and money making. If keenly studied and observed, the most common areas are of North Indian, countryside regions.
If Ankit Sharma was bonded by any adult person and was adopted then he was going to stay in the United States and was not going to come back and was not going to file a complaint against so called culprit Sharma.
In these types of cases where minors are involved the minors are adopted by relatives already living abroad, or friends of the family and minors accuse their parents for child abuse and Child Protective Services of those countries are involved in the adoption. If deeply investigated the same circumstances will come out in Ankit Sharama’s matter that he lied under oath and testified against his parents.
The adults who go to the western countries or America claim that they were politicians or actively involved in politics and were abused by the police, administration, politicians or by the ruling party or their goons, but in reality these people are nowhere near the politics or politicians. Even some of the party heads sell the letters to these asylum seekers and charge them between 60,000 rupees and 1,00,000.00 rupees.
Digging Deeper
A popular medical condition Stockholm syndrome is an emotional state where a captive victim finds comfort and befriends their captor and develops a psychological connect with their captor or kidnappers, for they are able to seek emotional benefits out of them.
The whole scenario can be linked to similar type of analytical situation where the victims
(Border Crossers) are actually seeking help out of the accused (XYZ Agents) or captors in order to seek benefit out of this act and reach to their dreamed destinations for their personal benefits.
However, when exposed, the ones who willed and initiated to cross the border ultimately become the victim and the one who helped them (even though illegally) but without any force or pressure lands up becoming a target and the culprit.
A contract usually is a consent between the two people where a person (B) pays certain amount to a person (A) who is a service provider and seek the services with their full individual consent without any outer force or pressure by (A).
Promising? Or compromised lifestyle?
Growth in population, unemployment and brain drain are no hidden truths when tagged along to India. What a well-educated graduate person earns in India is only a compromised unsatisfactory income that is accepted for mere survival. To be able to get the ‘wants’ they either have to brain drain or work for more than required hours. Education for all and equality in the distribution of wealth are still debatable in India, China, Pakistan and even in Mexico and Central American Countries. In a situation like this, a person is tend to be lured by a better living standard if gotten a chance and the same thing seems to happened in Sharama’s case and now police of Harayana is building up the case against Sharma and interrogating him in India, while he needs to be brought to justice in America, Canada and Australia where he made these border crossers to cross the border and enter into a foreign land.
When tracked down, the people who are able to go and reside legally/illegally into the United States are only seeking employment on the basis of their truck driving skills. The average income of these Indian or Pakistani truck drivers in the USA is far more than that of any well educated Indian who is employed in the corporate industry. The process starts, when they file their bonds and are released on the basis of these bonds. Thereafter they obtain their commercial driver licenses and drive big rigs or 18 wheelers. When these people drive 18 wheeler trucks and are able to draw enough income for their families back home, it sets an example and become references to those people who want to migrate legally/illegally into the USA and then the next batch goes to cross the borders and land into detention centers.
Perspective
These truck drivers do achieve the kind of income they want to earn but are they living a standardised life or is it a compromised one? The income they earn depends upon the duration of their working hours. They are paid 300$/day + 125-200$ for the lumpering work, which is unloading a trailer. The tax is not paid on this income and is invaded by showcasing their expenses.
On average these truck drivers make 4 trips in a month and are able to make an income of $8000.00 per month in the United States of America and out of which they pay $1000 for rent and electricity, utility and telephone bills. The income that stays with them amounts to $7000.00 per month that is 4,90,000 Indian Rupees. The insight into this can be analyzed and it can be drawn that it is both way act. The agents who help these illegal immigrants to cross the borders in sneaking into the United States are definitely the culprits, but it is surely a shared and contractual act.
There are many who are residing happily there with the help of the same agents and are grateful to them, on the other hand, there are those who, when caught AND are blaming the agents of committing fraud and cheating. The whole matter when deeply analyzed can showcase the motives of the now ‘victims’ who were once jobseekers and dreamers and paid to get into the United States, Canada, England or Australia and now is the ‘culprit’ to fulfill their desires.
