On the Newshour the past two days, there was a segment called “Desperate Journey”. To summarize it, they sent out a field reporter to travel with a group of migrants. These migrants who predominantly come from Africa and Southeast Asia take this journey with the hopes of reaching the US.
In the series they traverse the jungle, landing in Columbia and traveling to Panama through an area called the Darien Gap. There are all sorts of hardships they deal with like rising rivers, theft, rape, assault, starvation, and the like.
My question is why do they choose the USA when there are other options that are closer such as Europe or Australia? Is the Indian ocean treacherous? Is crossing of the Atlantic Ocean a safer or more common journey? Immigration policies more attractive?
Or at the very least why land in Columbia? I mean Mexico has a pretty large coastline that can’t all be guarded? The series also mentions that migrants from Cuba converge on this location as well. What the dope?
Maybe they have family/relatives/friends already residing in the US. Maybe they want a piece of the American dream, or feel they have more of a potential for a better life in NA than in Europe.
Maybe they feel this is a better chance than the mediterranean crossing option to Europe (which is the most common for African migrants) or the Turkey route which is more or less closed atm. (For those from SE Asia).
Australia has been very hardline in terms of migratons over the past few years, so I don’t think that is much of an option these days? The EU has also, to some degree, start policing their external southern borders with more resolve, and have made deals with Turkey amongst others to halt the influx of migrants through their lands.
But why migrants from SE Asia would chose Colombia as their landing ground seems strange, I would think somewhere on the west coast would be more logical for them?
As mentioned above, the migrants may have relatives already in the United States, or feel that the U.S. offers better economic possibilities than other options like Europe.
As to the particular choice of routes, it comes down to where they are able to fly to. From what I understand, Ecuador is fairly liberal about issuing visas, so migrants will fly there, and then make their way overland to Colombia, and north through to the United States. If they could fly somewhere closer to the U.S., they certainly would; the journey through Central America is terrible.