Mexican President Lopez Obrador announced recently that about 10,000 migrants and asylum seekers are arriving daily at the Mexico-US border looking to cross over to the US. This could mean wading across a river, crawling under barbed wire or showing up at counters and applying for asylum.

People are on the move. Economic migrants looking for work and asylum seekers for whom no danger can be worse than the difficulties they are trying to get away from. It is difficult to distinguish between the two; when entry is without valid papers, even economic migrants claim to be asylum seekers. They are hoisting toddlers onto their hips and walking across jungles for miles or riding any vehicle that would take them. These movements impact in various ways the people who move, the countries they exit and those they enter. Here are a few thumbnail sketches.

Geography has made Mexico the launch pad to the US and they come from all over Central and South America. Those coming to Panama from Colombia in the thousands have to navigate dense jungles. In August, 82,000 are estimated to have made that journey. Drug gangs in Colombia have diversified into human smuggling by providing guides through the jungles, tent camps for temporary halt, power boats and even porters. All for a fee, or else.

Gross mismanagement of the country, worsened by US sanctions, has made oil-rich Venezuela the place from which many seek to escape. They first try to settle elsewhere in the continent, but with few attractive options, ultimately find their way to the US border.

Texas, a southern US state, unable to deal with the inflow and wanting to make a political point, ships illegal migrants and asylum seekers off to northern states run by a different political party for them to deal with.

Second to the US, Germany has been hit by asylum seekers, receiving about 322,000 last year. People arrive from North Africa and the Middle East regularly, and more recently, from Ukraine. Over the years, domestic resentment in Germany has grown as housing has become scarce, unemployment risen, and so have crime rates. Surveys show that the share of Germans who believe the country should stop welcoming refugees has increased from 32 per cent to 48 per cent in just a year. The support for far-right parties calling for a ban on immigration has shot up.

Immigration sentiment

Compared to 1968, when 6.8 per cent of French population were immigrants, a 2021 study shows it is now about 10 per cent. Migrants especially from Francophone countries in Africa jump into rickety boats and many lose their lives crossing the Mediterranean. Anti-immigration sentiment is so strong now in France that it erupts into street violence. The French, fearing their culture is being diluted, are reacting. Wearing the abaya to class has now been prohibited in public schools.

The latest disruption is Nagorno-Karabakh. When Azerbaijan, in a swift strike, reclaimed this territory that had gone all but independent for many years, more than half the 120,000 ethnic Armenians living there piled into cars and trucks and moved into Armenia. Azeri assurances of fair treatment does not seem to carry much value. Border towns in Armenia are scrambling to provide shelter and basic necessities.

The Rohingya movement from Myanmar into Bangladesh, the Sri Lankan Tamils escaping war, and many other such stories from the past are still fresh in many memories.

Three main reasons that contribute to these movements include natural disasters, conflict and violence. The International Organization for Migration reminds us that only about 281 million people reside in a country other than their country of birth. Miniscule, in a global population of about 8 billion, and a reminder to us that people would prefer to stay near about where they are born and grow up. If only we could create the conditions to let them do that. Nations, as they did initially in the face of terrorism, are delaying recognition of cross-border migration as a global issue needing a global response. If they are waiting for a crisis, it is already here.

The writer is an emeritus professor at Suffolk University, Boston

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