Surging Toward Destination United States

"Trump doesn’t have a heart. He's speaking as if he didn’t have a family, didn’t have children."

"I want to work and work hard and be able to build a house for my mother [back in Honduras]. God’s been guiding me every step of this journey and providing for us."

"I always wanted to take the trip [north,] but didn’t dare to do it alone."

Gabriela López, 20, Honduran migrant heading north with an 11-month-old baby

"We can’t stay in one place for too long."

"Mexico is taking care of us, but our objective isn’t to stay here. The goal is to go northward."

Honduran migrant Jorge Pérez, 29

Migrants mob trucks hoping to get a ride north, in Irapuato, Mexico, on Monday. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

The spectacle of thousands of people assembling for a march that will take them weeks, perhaps months if they are forced to turn back -- and that appears to be the likeliest scenario out of this slowly unfolding drama -- is beyond belief. The very fact that people have convinced themselves that their assertiveness and dedication to a joint project, persuading the United States to open its borders to them when it already is crowded with the presence of millions of undocumented migrants is beyond naive, it's downright delusional.

Every country has the right to decide who and how many non-residents it will formally permit to gain entry. Every nation has an obligation to its own population to ensure a secure and orderly process takes place when introducing immigrants or refugees to their social order. The people making up the marchers, from single individuals to families are not immigrants nor are they refugees. They are self-designated economic migrants who feel that the wealthy United States of America somehow owes them a future.

Coming from countries struggling to lift themselves out of third world conditions and beset with corrupt governments, with crime and drug and weapons smuggling, with an overabundance of criminal elements, it is their countries of origin that are responsible for their well being and that responsibility should be demanded in numbers sufficient to move their governments to action. Instead of imposing a humanitarian obligation to relieve them of their discontent with their lot in life on the United States.

WGN-9 Chicago

They march in their thousands, weary but determined that nothing will stop them, that their destination is the United States and nothing else will satisfy their yearning for another kind of life than that which their home nation has given them. They are wilfully unaware that there is poverty in the United States, that there is crime and drug trafficking and inequality and that many citizens of the United States will never have their own aspirational future fulfilled as they too might wish it to be.

The original caravan with thousands of Central American migrants made its way to southern Mexico, inspiring days later another group in the hundreds to set out after them. The success of the first two in arriving halfway to their final destination simply acted like a contagion and another two caravans have begun their own journey. The perceived success of these ventures gives impetus to greater numbers to join them in a spur-of-the-moment decision that life will be better somewhere else. The greener-grass concept that has always provoked jealousy and dissatisfaction in people.

The knowledge that formal applications must be made for entry to a country to achieve a visa as the first step to applying for status seems to have been deliberately pushed aside. In favour of this increasingly spontaneous mass movement to invade a country that really and truly has no need of their presence and doesn't want them.A country that is not prepared to expend vast sums of treasury to ensure that the marchers will have their accommodation and food and health concerns addressed.

"Everyone wants to form another caravan", commented a Honduran farmworker, Tony David Galvez, 22, one of the marchers in the second caravan. Do they really think they should or would be welcomed happily? Can they really believe they have the right to insist on being taken in and that this right is an obligation the United States must acknowledge? The United Nations has passed a non-binding declaration of just such a right, led by non-aligned nations in a world body weighted heavily by undemocratic and human-rights-abusing nations.

The migrants have persuaded themselves that the American president will recognize the deep faith that drives them forward and compassionately welcome them. They are well aware of the statements that have been issued in the press by this president. Mexico is attempting to alleviate the stress of the migrants. Mexicans have always been at the forefront hitherto of illegal entrants to the United States escaping the same conditions that have been driving the Central Americans.

Security forces belonging to Honduras, Guatemala and to Mexico have made attempts to halt the progress of the caravans, to turn them back, to no avail. Their sheer force of numbers, in the main caravan alone thought now to be around 7,000 and growing and the ferocity with which many of the marchers have addressed efforts to stem their tide by throwing rocks and other projectiles at security forces in their way seems to point to violence in the offing should the migrants be blocked at any point.


Canadians were none too pleased when the United States obligingly issued visitor visas to Nigerians, enabling the Nigerians to legally enter the U.S. for their real purpose of travelling directly to the border with Canada, where they crossed illegally despite clearly posted signage indicating that to do so represented a criminal act and they would be arrested. Arrested? The RCMP escorted them to an official station where they could identify themselves as 'refugees' and make application for status in Canada. Very few of the applicants meet refugee status criteria.

The situation is dire and unpleasant. It is guaranteed that if any measure of success were to be realized by these thousands of determined migrants to enter the United States, it would signal to countless others that a repeat of the marches would meet the same success leading to the virtual emptying of failed states like those in Central America, and such as those in many African countries where the indigenous people would be quick to take the same route to what they believe would be a promising future for themselves.