The Perils of Illegal Immigration
Immigration is the act of entering another country to reside in and emigration is the leaving of one’s place of residence for another country.
Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in ways that violate the immigration laws of that country or where people reside in a country where they no longer have the legal right to remain, for example, students overstaying their visas, or the job seekers trying to remain in a high-wage market. They are popularly called illegal aliens. Undocumented immigrants refer to those people who have either out-stayed their time period in a particular country or those who entered a country with fake documents.
People mostly immigrate to other countries to either start a new life or rebuild. When they are unable to the gather original documents and travel in a legitimate manner, they then choose the option of traveling illegally. This is where the human traffickers come into the picture. Human smuggling is the illegal importation of people into a country via the deliberate evasion of the immigration laws. They might still choose to be smuggled across the borders because sometimes the benefits or the hopes of landing into a safe country might far outweigh the cost or perils of such travel. The people being smuggled might find themselves at the risk of assault and abuse such as rape, beating, kidnappings, prostitution, slavery, and robbery. Individuals being smuggled may be forced into human trafficking situations or their family may be extorted. This can take a severe toll on them physically and psychologically as they walk for several hours in high temperatures on unsafe and insecure routes and travel in overcrowded trucks without food, water, and ventilation for days.
The dangers of illegal immigration, though, can be numerous. The cost of such immigration might actually exceed the cost of a legal immigration. The money, after all, has to be split between the whole network, starting from the drivers who transport the illegal aliens to the series of houses where the illegal aliens are hiding to the handlers tied to the criminal organizations to the bribes to be paid to the patrolling officers.
The perils of illegal immigration are faced not only by the immigrants but also by the citizens of the country where they immigrate to as it adversely increases the threat to the national security.
There are many instances of deaths caused in the process of illegally trying to smuggle into another country’s borders. Many people either die on their way trying to illegally reach their dream destinations or when upon reaching, they are imprisoned and kept in the detention centers where they may even face death. They might cheat death on their harsh journey but are not always guaranteed a safe arrival. To land on their dream destinations, they really face a do or die kind of a situation as they have to undertake a perilous journey on a treacherous path where their health is guaranteed to be depleted. Indians, Mexicans, Columbians, Latinos, none are spared by this nexus of illegal immigration and the web of human smuggling.
Thus, we as humans may be fooled by the prospects of landing in our dream countries but as responsible citizens, we should not allow ourselves to be preyed upon by the devilish human traffickers.
