Human Smuggling by Alexandra Montana

Imagine yourself in the back of a transportation truck, surrounded by men, women and children, no space between each person, in the dark and no air conditioning or even windows, just small holes in the walls of the truck. After that, you and all the people who survived the road get off of the truck in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere. Then you start walking into the full darkness for hours without stopping not even for a minute or you’ll lose the rest of the people. Then you jump into the cold water and swim trying not to be taken by the current. Then get to the shore and try to not be spotted by the men in green uniforms and their lanterns, risking being seen and shot. In 2018, 396,579 people were caught trying to cross the South-West border between the U.S. and Mexico (Robertson). The great majority of these people cross illegally the U.S. border to escape from their chaotic and corrupt countries and give their families a better life. These people’s only objective is to chase down and complete the American Dream, even though many people will try to stop them at all cost, they risk their lives for their families. Would you help them to reach their dream or would you crush it?

Human smuggling is nothing new, people have been smuggled into other countries for centuries, so there is not an exact date to the beginning of these events. But one of the earliest events was The Flight of Varennes, which refers to “the failed attempt of King Louis XVI and his family to escape from revolutionary Paris in June 1791(“The Flight of Varennes”). Since then, human smuggling increased because of the fear and danger people faced in their countries and also because of slavery, which would be now known as human trafficking. Many people think that human trafficking and smuggling are the same, but there’s a big difference, “human trafficking centers on exploitation, while human smuggling centers on transportation”, meaning that with trafficking people, they are been kidnapped, sold as slaves, and women are raped and sold for sexual exploitation, and smuggling it’s only transporting people to the other side of the border by paying a fee to the “coyote” (“Human Trafficking and Smuggling”).  Most of the people being smuggled into the U.S. are Latin Americans, “three countries in particular-- Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador-- account for the bulk of non-Mexican migrants arrested at the U.S.- Mexico border” (“Who's Really Crossing The U.S.-Mexico Border”). These people risk their lives to cross the border because their countries are just filled with corruption, violence, hunger or even starvation and death. Many of the dangers these countries face are due to cocaine trafficking from South America and the gangs that own and hunts the streets, and because they are small countries their economies don’t get any better, so they are forced to flee their country (2). Today each year about 300,000 people are being smuggled into the United States and the coyotes, the persons that are in charge of smuggling the groups of people across the border, are paid around $5,000 dollars per person, meaning that each year they make an estimate of $500 million dollars (Kessler).

Smuggling people into other countries can have a great effect on the smuggled people’s lives. For starters, the journey is not easy people are “expose to injury and even death, while overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and shortages of food and water increase the risk of spreading infectious disease”(Todres). The journey alone is a nightmare, but they don’t only face health dangers, they also suffer physical, sexual and emotional violence by the hands of the people in charge (2). All of these leave a “scar” in their lives, they are permanently marked by the horrors they suffered and for many of them is something that will never erase from their memories, some of these scars with names like “acute psychosis, psychological crisis, severe depression, disabling anxiety and more (Young). But for some of them, the nightmare doesn’t end there, people who traveled all alone without a clear destination have nowhere to go. They don’t have a family to go to nor a friend, they don’t even have a place to stay the night or money to buy some food because they gave all of their money to the “coyotes”. From here they have to go alone looking for a safe place and a job. On the other hand, this also affects to the country to which they are being smuggled into, because this country would have to pay for this person's aids and if they have children they would have to go to school and go to the doctor. In the United States are more than 12.5 million immigrant persons from different countries, “that amounts to a tax burden of approximately $8,075 per illegal alien family member and a total of $115,894,597,664”(O'Brien and Spencer).  But not everything is bad when they enter another country. When people come to another country they bring their customs with them “immigrants expand culture by introducing new ideas and customs”, good examples are 5 de Mayo and three kings ring on the 6th of January (McCarthy). Immigrants also help the economy, because here in the United States they make the hard work in the fields that no other American want to do, and some people say that immigrant people are stealing the native-born workers jobs, but the reality is that immigrants and native-born workers do not compete for the same jobs, “Instead, many immigrants complement the work of US employees and increase their productivity” (2). Also, undocumented people pay taxes too, “immigrants pay an average of $11.64 billion in state and local taxes a year” (“7 Ways Immigrants”). People who say that people who come to the United States just came to steal the jobs of native-born Americans or that they come to live “free” or from the government, they are totally wrong, because these people only come to work, they work harder and longer than most Americans. Some of them spend the whole day on the harvest fields, under the sun, working non-stop just to make some money and put some food on their tables. They didn't come to steal anything from anybody, they are hardworking and honest people, and yes they may need some help now and then, but let’s be honest, who doesn’t?

Immigrant people who come to another country by themselves are seriously strong to endure all the difficulties and dangers of the journey. Can you imagine yourself crossing an entire country by yourself and without any legal documentation, just to see your mother for the first time in more than 10 years? That is what my best friend had to do to see her mother once again. Her family in El Salvador had to pay a big amount of money to a coyote to smuggled her across the border between Mexico and Guatemala, cross all the country of Mexico and then cross the U.S.-Mexico border. She had to travel from her little town to the next one called San Miguel to gather with the people who organized the smuggling, from there she took a bus to the capital San Salvador. She waited there for about 5 hours in San Salvador to then take a bus to Guatemala, but before arriving to the frontier they got out of the bus in the darkness of the night. She remembers seeing a big, half-opened gate, where she had to go into even though the opening was very small and she could barely fit in, on the other side of the gate was a car waiting for her, she got in and the driver took her to a hotel. She could barely rest that night, the nerves, fear, and anxiety didn´t let her, that and that the people in charge woke her at 3 A.M. she had to get out of the hotel running to get in another bus that was waiting for her and the rest of the people. They traveled to the border between Mexico and Guatemala, still in the dark, she got in a small, old looking boat to cross the river that divides these two countries. When she arrived in Mexico, on the other side of the river, she jumped on into different buses and cars for 12 hours straight. When she finally arrived at the Rio Grande she had to cross it, not in boats nor with life vests, instead, they gave her a tire tube, thankfully she made it safely. After she crossed the river she had to start walking for a very long time until she reached the highway, then some cars picked her and the other people up and they drove for just a short time until they had to get out again. She started walking again, but this time for 3 days and 3 night without stopping, no food, no water, no sleeping, just walking. She reached the point where she was already so exhausted, dehydrated and hungry that she was just walking by inertia, but with the little strength she had left in her entire body she lifted her chin up and at the horizon she saw a little abandoned house located on the outsides of McAllen, where she could rest a little before another car came to pick her up. They took her to another house at the center of McAllen, this time a big and beautiful house and she stayed there for a longer time, so she could rest, recharge her energies and just relax. After a couple of days, a man with a pick up truck came for them, it was strange because there was only one truck and there were a lot more people that could fit in. The people in charge made all the men get on the back of the truck all of them lying down, one on top of the other, and all the women including her on the back seats of the truck, again one on top of the other so everyone could fit in. There were so many people in just that back cabin that she could barely breathe, and when she got out of the truck her lungs could expand normally again and were filled with fresh air. She was directed to another bus, which took her all the way to Houston, Tx. When the bus stop and people started to get off the bus her heart was pounding so hard against her chest that even the people around her could listen to her fast beat, she could feel her entire body filling with different types of emotions-- relief, happiness, excitement, fear. She knew that her mom would be out there, waiting impatiently for her to get off the bus, and when she did, there she was standing beside her stepfather and her two little brothers. At that moment she knew the nightmare was over, she was safe now and she was with her family once more.

Human smuggling exists because there are push and pull factors that make the people want to leave their countries and enter another one. Some of the push factors include “poverty, lack of opportunities, persecution or civil unrest, and ecological degradation in source countries” all of this factors make a hard life for the residents of the low economy countries and make them want to leave at any cost (“Toolkit to Combat”). The pull factors, which are what attracts the people include “greater perceived economic opportunity, lifestyle, and political stability” (2).

One option to save these people’s lives would be to eliminate those push factors, but of course, that is something very difficult to do. First to eliminate poverty, the economy of the home-countries of these people would have to increase. A poor country is considered “poor” when it’s GDP is very  low, “GDP is the total market value, expressed in dollars, of all final goods and services produced in an economy in a given year” (Wolla). If these countries could increase the quantity and quality of the products they export the economy would increase, more jobs would be created and people would have a better income for their families. With all of that people would not feel the necessity to flee their countries for a better life.

Another of the mentioned push factors was the ecological degradation. Based on the article “Causes and Effects of Environmental Degradation.” by Rinkesh Kukreja, the correct definition for economic degradation is “the disintegration of the earth or deterioration of the environment through consumption of assets, for example, air, water, and soil”(Kukreja). Now, this is a problem that is happening not only on the poor countries, but in the whole planet. This is an issue that all of us should be concerned about and should be doing something to fix it, or at least stop it long enough for environmentalists to find a good solution. But focusing back on the poor countries where these people are migrating from, a good solution for this problem would be to find people and scientists to volunteer and help getting the fertile soils back and make strategies to save water in extremely dried zones.

One of the main push factors is the organized crime, violence, guns, drugs, people don't feel safe when these things are around in their community and of course many people would think that just getting rid of these would make everything much easier. The answer for that is yes, it would make everything a lot more easier, people would feel safe again. The problem with that solution is that for many years people have tried to do it, but without any success. A good reason why this can’t happen is because “Organized crime and corrupt institutions could only be challenged if States displayed a collective will to do so,” and as many of us now, this country’s governments are full of corruption and are not willing to take down the cartels just for their own good(“Struggle against Organized Crime”).

           

Albert Camus’ belief was that life was meaningless, but still we must find or create a meaning for it and try to live the best we can of it. Camus’ belief relates to this specific topic because the people that are crossing the borders are trying to do what Camus wants people to do-- give a meaning to your life. These people are doing something, you can say absurd, they are willing to suffer hunger, dehydration, exhaustion, and  many more dangers maybe worst than the one they been suffering in their home-countries, just to get inside another country hiding, unsure of where to go. But at the end they all do it to reach that goal of a better life, by enduring all these they are giving a real meaning to their lives and to their families’ too. Maybe for some of us the American Dream is not a good meaning for a life, and that’s fine because not all of us think the same way. Some may think that a the answer is God, others may think is the spiritual energy, the cosmos, money or just family, whatever you think will fulfill your life. Nobody know exactly the answer, “Mankind is absurd in that we cannot live without meaning, however, we are incapable of determining meaning,” maybe we can't determine meaning because nobody has ever found it or maybe just because each person has a different meaning for their lives (“The Absurdist Explains).

            Human smuggling is something that it’s been happening for centuries, caused by dangerous and corrupt countries were people seem forced to flee from and get into another as an illegal immigrant, just to find a better life for them and for their families. These people do not come to the U.S. to steal jobs or goods, they do not come to live from the government, they come to work, study, to make money and simply just have a better life, which they couldn’t have in their home countries. In many ways they just want what everybody wants-- a better future. That’s why it’s important that when we see an immigrant person, we mustn’t discriminate against him/her. Instead we should offer some help, a job would be a wonderful option. Also when you see someone else discriminating an immigrant you should stop them, just making sure that you are not putting yourself in a dangerous situation. 

Work Cited

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