🌊 How one migrant walked into the US

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Part 3: Working to America

This tells the story of Xavier, a migrant who traveled from Colombia to New York City. Did you miss parts 1 and 2? They’re available here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Gangsters guided Xavier, his girlfriend, and her four-year-old son out of the Darién Gap. On the other side, they found themselves penniless in a tent camp in Panama. From there, they needed to reach Texas.

In Colombia, Xavier had said to me, “We don't want to always stay in the same cycle, unable to improve, unable to climb up. We want to work…we want to lift ourselves up.”

That work started now.

Beginning in Panama, Xavier and his girlfriend, Kerlin, would work. Each day, they’d procure some trinkets and sell them in traffic, buy cleaning supplies and wash cars, or get snacks and sell them on the street. Every penny they saved, they invested in reaching America.

And each day, they drew closer.

After three days, they reached Costa Rica. Less than a week after that, they reached Nicaragua.

“We passed a small trocha [illegal border crossing] to avoid immigration and it was terrifying,” Xavier messaged me then. “It was only us three in the trocha with many men who work there.”

“We were scared but thanks to God nothing happened.”

But a few days later, a wrench was thrown in his plan: A Canadian he had met warned him against entering the US illegally. Life would be hard, he warned. They should do it the right way.

But what does that look like?

***

Months before this, the Biden Administration had enacted a new policy intended to prevent illegal immigration from Venezuela.

As part of that, the government announced “a new process to lawfully and safely bring up to 24,000 qualifying Venezuelans into the United States.” That would be 24,000 people in a year at a time when 50,000 were coming per month. Furthermore, those people would need to be in Venezuela and get approval, which could take years.

These migrants are walking through the jungle and across Mexico to get to America. Who among them would wait to toss their hat in the ring for a 3% shot at getting into the US a year or more down the road?

Not Xavier, so he continued on.

The trio hustled their way across Honduras and Guatemala. In Mexico, they dodged predatory gangs and police. One night, Xavier sent me a picture of his girlfriend’s four-year-old sleeping on a cardboard box on the street.

“Migration took us off the bus Max,” he said.

Yet they continued: From the Mexican state of Chiapas to Oaxaca, then to Mexico City, then to the Gulf Coast. As they progressed, they learned that the best place to cross was Brownsville, Texas: “Brownsville is the border where we will go,” Xavier wrote.

Two days later, another message: “Max God bless you…We have arrived at the border max already we are on the borders of the United States thanks to God.”

“We are going to enter legally max with a permit from the United States government,” he added.

“We are going to enter legally.”

The aforementioned Biden order was painted as a crackdown on immigration because it declared, “Effective immediately, Venezuelans who enter the United States between ports of entry, without authorization, will be returned to Mexico.”

“Without authorization.”

So how does one get “authorization”?

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