A migrant ‘caravan’ for the U.S. and a migrant trickle for Guyana

Oct 28, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

By Dennis Nichols

Migrants, and their recurrent plight, are in the news again. And it’s not good news. The British newspaper, The Guardian, says the mass movement of people is arguably the biggest story of our time. (The term ‘migrants’ often includes refugees and asylum seekers, with the common thread being the search for a better life, leaving poverty, violence, persecution, and social chaos behind. We in Guyana know that only too well.)

Even as I write, an incredible saga is unfolding in Mexico as some thousands of men, women, and children from Honduras and other Central American countries, having slogged their way across Guatemala, are walking a Mexican marathon. The finish line is that country’s northern border with the United States.

They may however never get there, and even if some do, a hostile reception awaits them if U.S. President Donald Trump has his way.

Mr. Trump has said he will send U.S. troops to meet them at the border. He has also threatened to further cut aid to the countries from which they left, including at least one to which he gave that now notorious epithet, and has called the advancing throng ‘an assault on our country’.

He added that some persons in the human convoy are criminals and terrorists, and is ‘weighing a plan’ to shut them out at the U.S. border, denying them the opportunity to seek asylum which, under U.S. law, is a right for foreign nationals fleeing persecution.

For thousands of years, untold numbers of humans have engaged in these fateful journeys; maybe since the first bipedal humans trekked over mountain passes and saw other humans with greener pastures, better shelters, and more food. Visions of a utopian promised land have long haunted the human imagination.

But the Central American exodus or ‘caravan’ as it has become known, has no Moses to lead it, and the trekkers, unlike the ancient Israelites, have neither the spiritual nor physical resources to confront American resolve.

In modern times, the migration of hundreds of millions of people over the last 40 to 50 years is primarily a tale and a trail of woe. It is global in magnitude, and is seen by many as an indictment on humanity.

This migratory tale, nevertheless, has enough success stories over the centuries to keep the procession perennially marching in search of betterment. Guyana has contributed small but steady ripples to this efflux, but due to our tiny population, we are still bit players in the outflow, and of late, inflow.

Not so some of our Latin American and Caribbean neighbours. Mexico led the north-bound vanguard in the previous century, later to be followed by countries like Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, and more recently Venezuela.

Outside the region, India, Russia, China, and Bangladesh have been churning out the most migrants this century, contributing to the 244 million international immigrants recorded globally in 2015, the last year for which such figures are available from the 2018 World Migration Report.

There is of course also internal migration, and interestingly, the figures for this movement within the country of one’s birth is much higher, somewhere in the vicinity of 700 million plus. But that’s another story.

Unsurprisingly, the United States has been the recipient of the greatest number of migrants from the greatest number of countries. According to the report, the number of foreign-born people living in the country has almost quadrupled between 1970 and 2015, from less than 12 million to almost 47 million.

Of course, we know what has been happening on American soil for centuries, as compared to what has been happening recently. This mass of Central American migrants/refugees, mostly from Honduras but also El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, is only the latest in an unending train that has brought foreigners to America after the first Europeans settled there at the beginning of the 17th century.

One of the biggest mass movements in history was the involuntary ‘relocation’ of Africans to the American continent (including the Caribbean). To these were added large numbers of Europeans from dozens of countries, and later Latin Americans, Chinese, Australians, Jews, Mid-Eastern Arabs, Asians, and West Indians, among others.

For a long time, the U.S. stated and implied it was truly “a nation of immigrants”, but earlier this year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services deleted those words from its mission statement. Its director said it is now a “simple straightforward statement” that “clearly defines the agency’s role in our country’s lawful immigration system…”

Meanwhile in Guyana, Venezuelans fleeing hard times in their country, continue to trickle in across our north-west border and other points, seeking respite from a crisis their president has described as an ‘economic war’ being waged against his government, primarily by the United States.

The trickle into Guyana has swelled lately, and at one entry point, Parika, our citizenship minister has mandated that the Immigration Department strengthen its operations there.

In our capital city, Chinese, Cuban, Brazilian, and Venezuelan immigrants and visitors mix and mingle with the descendants of slaves, indentured labourers, and native Amerindians, as Georgetown takes on a more visible multicultural hue. In Regions One and Seven, our government, assisted by UNICEF, is helping displaced Venezuelans adjust to change.

This parochial insight into the plight of migrants and refugees in this part of the world comes less than one month before a symbolic anniversary reminding us of the horror that ended the dream-turned-nightmare ‘experiment’ of Jonestown. Jim Jones’ followers were migrants of a different sort, but they shared aspirations similar to those of the Central American marchers now drawing closer and closer to American soil.

The ironic juxtaposition of what happened at Port Kaituma four decades ago and what is happening now south of the U.S/Mexican border should not be lost on anyone, especially Guyanese. (And maybe Americans) Let’s hope the ‘caravan’ migrants fare a good deal better than the 900-plus Americans whose dreams ended in spectacular catastrophe 40 years ago.