Poverty In South America

Great Essays
Poverty in Mexico and South America has been the cause of many immigrants going in search of other means to provide for their families. The United States population consists of four percent of undocumented immigrants and in 2008, 8.3 million immigrants made up the workforce (Androff et. al). Immigrants face many difficulties throughout Mexico as they try and reach the United States. As stated by the Mexican National Institute of Migration, there are hundreds of thousands of immigrants who cross the Mexican border totaling 400,235 immigrants each year (Gorney). The dangers of immigrants crossing borders to pursue the American Dream are staggering: extremely dangerous grounds, corruption, and devastating climate.
For many men, women and children
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“Grupo [group] Beta a branch of the federal migrant protection agency” (Gorney 7) in Mexico is aware of all the dangers immigrants from South America face as they try to cross the Mexican border. The group is better known as a relief group that aids immigrants by providing food, water, and medications. Francisco Aceves, the leader of the group, argues that even though the immigrants don’t have proper documentation to show their statues in the country, no one should ever be robbed or raped (Gorney 8). Yet, in the statistics provided by Joseph Sorrentino, “eighty percent of migrants will be robbed, and sixty percent of migrant women will be raped.” In 2010 alone, 11,333 people were kidnapped between the months of April and September. Many of these abuses were at the hands of the Zetas, a group of gang members, who specializes in kidnapping migrants in order to extort their family members into paying a ransom (Sorrentino). The Zetas are known for forcing migrants off of busses or trains at gun point and then taking them to safe houses where they torture and beat the person in order to achieve the number of any relative in the United States. If family members are unable to pay the ransom, the migrants become of no value and many are murdered. In 2010, in Tamaulipas state near the Texas border, 72 migrants were killed and many others have been found in mass graves (Fraser …show more content…
As found in The Devil’s Highway written by Luis Alberto Urrea, states that anyone who is left behind in the dessert by the coyote can suffer tremendously before dying. Many people believe that gender plays a role in whether the person will suffer extremely or die quickly; but that has been found to be untrue, women as well as men will fight to stay alive. The only truth is that each person will pass through six stages, better known as Hyperthermia, before dying (120). One incident that resulted in fourteen dessert deaths was that of the Yuma 14, after the coyote became disoriented and lost his way he then left them behind telling them he was going get help. Each of the victims passed through one of the six stages. Heat Stress, being the first stage consisting of discomfort, dizziness and feeling thirsty. Heat Fatigue follows. It involves the body trying to regulate the heat within by producing sweat. As one of the victims declares “This heat is killing me,” he was not lying. In this stage the dessert starts drinking you slowly at first then in big gulps, causing you to start drying from within (122). The third stage is Heat Syncope in this stage the body develops a fever which is produced by the surrounding heat. In this stage the body imitates a stroke. It starts to become colder, it gets harder to talk, and the person

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