What I Saw in the Darién Gap
theatlantic.com
What I Saw in the Darién Gap
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Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#2If you want to see actual video of crossing the Darien Gap - this guy makes great videos. He did the crossing himself.
Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#3Good overview and history of the Darien Gap migrant issue:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/10/how-treacherous-darien-g...
Also, see the work of journalist Michael Yon.
Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#4Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#5Michael Yon has been down there for about 2 years (?). Before that he was in HK and in Iraq. His reporting doesn't have a pro-globalist bias.
Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#6This is crazy and obviously has to be stopped somehow. Can't the US Army be sent down there to patrol the upper border of the jungle, so force the migrants to return?
Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#7Just in time for election season, these "human interest" pieces casually begin to appear, surreptitiously stoking anti-immigrant sentiments.
The Darien Gap is still "wild" because not a lot of migrants crossed it historically. Most US migrants came from Mexico.
However, migration from Mexico has greatly decreased in recent decades. The net flow is around zero. [1] That's because Mexico is no longer an undeveloped country. Its nominal per-capita GDP is above Russia's and China's. [2] NAFTA was an important component of its success.
Mexico offers a blueprint for what needs to happen in Central and South America before we no longer face the temptation of putting children in cages at the border.
There are only a few countries left that fit the bill, such as Guatemala and El Salvador. Brazil and Venezuela have been recent additions (hence the Gap crossings.) Parenthetically, we have Putin to thank for a few of these, especially Venezuela.
I think we should reconsider the "hands off" attitude that (with a few exceptions) has prevailed since the end of the Cold War. Political deference, while culturally sensitive and insisted upon by some US-weary groups, has not turned out so great.
Direct US participation should be at least as much as in Europe and Asia, particularly financially. The IMF and World Bank don't have enough teeth, and it certainly beats spending money on cages.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/09/before-co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#8This is crazy and obviously has to be stopped somehow. Can't the US Army be sent down there to patrol the upper border of the jungle, so force the migrants to return?
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Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#9If you want to see actual video of crossing the Darien Gap - this guy makes great videos. He did the crossing himself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aswvkdCpZYc
(For what it's worth, so did the author of this piece).
Re: What I Saw in the Darién Gap
#10This is crazy and obviously has to be stopped somehow. Can't the US Army be sent down there to patrol the upper border of the jungle, so force the migrants to return?
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What nonsense! Title 42 is still in place and as much as the GOP likes to paint Democrats as immigration loving there were more deportations under Obama & Biden than Trump. Perhaps look past the political soundbites and more at the numbers and the immense complexity of the situation.