Hello Genius, It's Your Weekly Wag!
Dear Wags,
In the Northeastern city where I live, there is a clinic that provides free healthcare to Latin American migrants. The other day, a cheerful woman from Cuba came in for her appointment. Since the pandemic, more than 500,000 Cubans, or about 4 percent of the population, have left their island. The average daily wage in Cuba totals less than $2.00 a day, but it is not alone in collapse. In Haiti, thousands displaced by another cycle of unrest are taking to escape boats. Venezuela, where I have roots, has seen the largest regional exodus of all: Nearly 8 million people have fled economic and political chaos since 2014. Many of them are determined to reach the United States.
The Cuban woman weathered biblical trials to sit in an American waiting room. She scraped enough money together to get to Ecuador, where there are an estimated 100,000 Cuban exiles. But Ecuador weathers volatility that drives many of its own citizens north. Threatened with expulsion, she moved on to Colombia, which is already attempting to absorb 3 million displaced Venezuelans. Determined to reach relatives in America, she then trekked to Panama across the Darién Gap, 160 miles of swampland and mountains that cleaves the Pan-American Highway in two.
Wearing ordinary running shoes, the woman joined seekers from the hemisphere’s reliable trouble spots, as well as countries as remote as China, Somalia, and Bangladesh. Caravans traversing such rugged terrain contend with mudslides, floods, and criminal gangs. Despite regional efforts to stem the traffic, at least a half million people attempted the route in 2023.
Not everyone makes it. Last year, the Missing Migrant Project reported 141 deaths in the wilderness between South and Central America. Travelers are vulnerable to disease, drowning, dehydration, and assault. The real body count is likely much higher. It’s difficult to track migrants, let alone recover their corpses.
The woman made it safely to Panama City, still more than 4,000 miles from the upper right hand corner of the United States. She dodged hazards in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico before arriving in Texas. The borderlands between Mexico and the U.S. are even more dangerous than the Darién Gap. In 2022, the MMP documented 686 deaths and disappearances in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, making it the world’s deadliest land route for migrants. (About 2,500 people have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe, making it the riskiest passage of all.)
The legacy of the Cold War means Cubans still have some advantages when it comes to obtaining U.S. residency. Still, this woman’s ordeal is shared by migrants from many nations. She is part of an enormous human tide unleashed by global instability. Nearly every region of the planet is touched by it—places as disparate as Iran, Germany, and Uganda host millions of refugees. This global chain is forged in desperation and unsettles every territory it crosses.
In the U.S. and other destination countries, there is no longer an immigration debate so much as a primal scream. Border policy will be a defining issue of the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump works assiduously to preserve it as a wedge issue, while Joe Biden struggles to find his voice on the topic. Disputants on all sides acknowledge things are broken. If you don’t think our immigration system is a mess, talk to an immigrant.
This is personal for many of us. In the last century, my grandmother, Maria Teresa Rodriguez, left Caracas on the S.S. Philadelphia bound for New York City. At the time, she was an 18-year-old widow with a two-year-old daughter, my eldest aunt. In what seems to be a perennial Venezuelan theme, her life was went from boom to bust with terrifying regularity. Her first husband died of tuberculosis. Fearing that she would be forced to marry his half-brother, she fled into the jungle, taking her child and whatever she could carry. Or so goes family lore.
She spoke no English and found work as a milliner in Brooklyn. In the following years, she had four children by two fellow Venezuelan exiles; one who died from pneumonia, and another who was assassinated in the old country. She lost a child to disease before marrying my grandfather, another Spanish-speaking migrant. They had three more children, including my mother. Along the way, my grandmother’s sisters joined her as nomads. For decades, the women cycled between continents. They suppressed much to try and become Americans, but were stranded somewhere in between. It isn’t difficult to unearth such tales in a land of immigrants. We all share a legacy of rootlessness going back to the Bering Land Bridge.
Like it or not, this is a collective story. The immigration debate melts those at its heart into an undifferentiated mass. Bureaucrats attempt to sort them—refugees created by conflict, migrants roving for opportunity, immigrants (documented or not) seeking new homes, and political asylum seekers. The truth is, these definitions are muddy. People will fit into several categories at once, or by turns. What’s clear is that human beings confronted by terrible hardship will try to escape.
Legalities matter, and sovereign states must control their borders. Not everybody who joins an exodus is heroic or deserving of sanctuary. Among migrants and every other population, there are villains. Even so, it takes enormous courage to risk everything for a chance at a better life.
