Hardship has driven people to risk illegal immigration
- It’s often a hazardous journey to a better life in another country, but migration goes on. Swelling global numbers in recent times can be traced to K-shaped economic recoveries from the covid pandemic.
The Darien Gap, a 106km expanse of dense and dangerous jungle that straddles Panama and Colombia, has become the unlikely route for migrants seeking to get into the US illegally from Latin and Central America. Few roads to El Dorado could be more challenging. Last year, a New York Times reporter Julie Turkewitz and a photographer undertook the journey for a week. Turkewitz described a 6-year-old girl separated from her mother, who couldn’t keep up. After the two were reunited a couple of days later with Turkewitz’s help, the mother broke down in tears and returned to Venezuela to apply online for US immigration via a new scheme announced by the Joe Biden administration.
Half the world away, a chartered plane of about 300 would-be Indian immigrants, principally from Gujarat and Punjab, took off from the UAE to Nicaragua last month. The passengers were likely planning to take similarly dangerous land routes into the US. The flight was grounded in a small airport not far from Paris because authorities heard allegations of human trafficking, and most of its passengers were returned to India. January marks a year since a Gujarati couple in their late-30s from Gandhinagar district sought to cross from Canada into the US in Arctic temperatures of minus 30° Celsius. The couple and their daughters, aged 11 and 3, were found frozen to death near the US border.
The beginning of a year is typically a time of hope and renewal, but 2024 promises to be a year of disruption and dismay. Illegal immigration, attempted by millions in the hope of better lives in the developed world, increasingly defines the politics of Europe and the US, fuelling the ascendance of right-wing politicians who promise to crack down on it. Once a bastion of liberal politics, the Netherlands in November pole-vaulted Geert Wilders, a far-right politician who has pushed for shutting down mosques among other extreme steps, to premiership after his party doubled its legislative seats.
There were nearly 900,000 asylum applications to the EU in 2022 and 650,000 in the first eight months of 2023. Given labour shortages in many north European countries, these are not very high numbers and well below 2015 and 2016 levels. But 4 million Ukrainians given refuge since Russia’s invasion can complicate the picture. The flood of migrants seeking US entry has been exploited by Republican politicians, including former president Donald Trump. In a bizarre example, Republican governors in the US have been bussing illegal immigrants to Democrat-ruled states, known to be more humane in their treatment of immigrants.
Many countries are thus caught in a pincer; illegal immigration continues to rise and in turn provides ammunition for far-right politicians in the developed world to win elections. If the world is faced with the calamity of a second Trump administration after the US presidential elections in November, illegal immigration will be a large reason why. The Conservative party in the UK, meanwhile, continues to make immigrants a lightning rod even after dubious schemes such as processing asylum claims in Rwanda have been struck down by British courts and opposed by civil society, including the head of the Protestant church in England. The inflow of immigrants was a political issue that underpinned Brexit and also helped Conservatives win the last election.
The question of why so many people from developing countries are taking risky routes to the West is easily answered. The K-shaped recovery since the pandemic and higher inflation has put more pressure on lower income groups in the developing world. As the New York Times observed, “Almost three years after a deadly pandemic began ravaging the world, a devastating combination of pandemic fallout, climate change, growing conflict and rising inflation is creating a seismic shift in global migration, sending millions of people from their homes."
Closer home, in Sri Lanka, young Sri Lankans are paying agents to get to Romania, which like Central America is seen as a gateway to wealthy Europe. A moving BBC podcast last April, ‘Leaving Sri Lanka,’ estimated that one in 25 Sri Lankans had emigrated since the country’s economic crisis began a couple of years ago.
The persistent trend of ever more young people from India, notably from Punjab and Gujarat, looking for illegal pathways to the West might seem puzzling, given the fact that the country has the world’s fastest growing large economy and its stock market is scaling new highs. But India’s ability to expand its middle class has slowed dramatically since the financial crisis in 2008 and the slowdown that followed. Manufacturing jobs are also not growing because of greater automation and a loss of export competitiveness in labour-intensives manufactures. Small and mid-sized businesses are struggling, while large companies are seeing their share of profits increase. The success of large businesses plays an outsized role in boosting our GDP numbers, while the failure of smaller enterprises is harder to record.
Every so often, as with the grounded plane full of would-be migrants from Gujarat and Punjab, this aspect of our jobs crisis briefly features on news pages. “There is a sense that only those who pay money or are well-connected get government jobs," a community leader in Mehsana, Gujarat, told The Hindu last week. “There are no well-paying private jobs. So it is better to be in some menial job in Canada and the US than stay in India and struggle forever."
