In June 2019 the US Border Patrol found 500 Africans – men, women, and children – in Texas walking along the Rio Grande. Most came from Cameroon and D.R. Congo, where hundreds of thousands have been displaced by war and persecution. Of the displaced a few thousand are apparently headed for the US. That is nothing compared to the number of Central American refugees, but still a surprisingly high number.
No such thing as bad publicity: Randy Capps, a director of research at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC:
“The migrant crisis at the U.S. border has been so well-publicized, and because of all the chaos over policymaking in Washington, D.C., it really gives the impression that the U.S. border is open for business right now.”
President Trump has made the US-Mexico border world-famous! But there is more to it than just that:
Europe cracks down: Most African refugees head for Europe. Thus all those Africans who have been crossing the Mediterranean Sea these past few years. But in 2018 the European Union (EU), Italy, Libya, and Turkey cracked down. Italy, for example, has made it a crime to save drowning migrants at sea! Now only about a fifth as many cross the Mediterranean. Many of the rest are now stuck in Libya, a country sunk in civil war, where human traffickers run free.
The United Nations has been able to get some refugees out of Libya to camps in neighbouring Niger, a generous but poor country. Only 12 countries, though, have been willing to resettle the refugees. The US is not one of them. Not that that stops anyone from coming to the US on their own:
The journey from Africa to the US border takes about four months. Most fly to Brazil or Ecuador (expensive, but otherwise easy) and then head for the US border from South America on foot and by bus. Many are travelling with their children.
The Darien Gap is by far the most dangerous part of the journey: there are no roads between Colombia and Panama! Instead there are 106 kilometres of swamp, mountain and jungle. And robbers – highwaymen without a highway. It takes about a week to cross it.
Mexico and Central American countries generally let Africans pass through: they are from so far away that there are no applicable repatriation treaties and flying them back would be expensive. Mexico most often gives them a 20-day transit visa. But then many get stuck in informal camps on the Mexican side of the US border.
Portland, Maine is where a surprising number of them wind up. Portland, Maine’s biggest city (population 67,000), took in Somalis in the 1990s and already had many Congolese Americans.
Language is a big barrier. Many African refugees speak French, not Spanish or English. The Cameroonians, though, do know English. It is why they had to flee Cameroon in the first place: the French-speaking government’s persecution of the English-speaking minority has led to war.
– Abagond, 2019.
See also:
- The Anglophone crisis in Cameroon
- seeking asylum
- Donald Trump
- Elton John: Rocket Man
- Niger
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Hope they can find safe sanctuary.
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@Abagond: Including the United Nations – what are the on-going policies and opinions taking place on the globe to settle these migrations from unsafe conditions in their countries of birth and their trek to live normally elsewhere?
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The United Nations is not going to help these migrants. They failed in the 1994 Rwandan massacre, they abandoned those people by tucking their tails between their legs and running.
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@Mary Burrell- You are so right about the United Nations:butts warming seats, attending cocktail parties and doing under cover scandalous things no one dares talk about.
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Send them back to Africa were they belong.
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We should have our military patrolling our border.
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