Let's take immigrant workers to the United States as an
example, as opposed to say, the casual tourist who is going abroad without
documents.
Large numbers of immigrants cross the border
without documents each year because of the employment opportunities available here, and
the poverty south of that border. The dangers involved in this are significant and
physical as well as legal.
About ten percent of my students
are undocumented, and the stories I have heard over the years about their border
crossing experiences are scary indeed. Paying off coyotes (smugglers) who sometimes
steal their possessions and leave them in the desert, crossing wide open tracts of
desert on foot without adequate food or water, and often with small children, being
robbed or assaulted on the way to the border, being kidnapped and sold into slavery or
sexually exploited. These are all very real dangers and realities for undocumented
workers trying to cross the southern border into the US, not to mention the chances of
being caught and deported to go through the process all over
again.
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