That mostly works when you're single and without any hard ties.

Uprooting a well grown tree isn't easy.

There's also some double standards. If you walk from Ecuador to Texas, passing through the Darien Gap and one of your kids gets ripped into some river never to be seen again, finally showing up in El Paso to sleep under a bridge until the heat exhaustion goes away, then you are a glorious immigrant who put it all on the line to give your family a better life.

If you hitch-hike from California to Vermont while feeding your kids whatever rats and river water you can dredge up and then set up a tent in the forest until you can score a job at Dollar General, then you are an evil neglectful bastard and the state will be on your ass and take your kids away.

You might be better off actually moving countries if you are broke. Because for whatever reason it is better tolerated because you can just say you were broke and your children went through hard times because the last country was evil or something.

▲

rexpop 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> you are a glorious immigrant who put it all on the line to give your family a better life

According to whom?

The immense hardship endured by migrants isn't a badge of glory, but the direct result of a global economic system designed to extract wealth from the global south to enrich the global north.

The current economic disparity between the United States and the countries to its south is not an accident. The wealth of the United States, like much of the Western Hemisphere, was built on a foundation of 500 years of ongoing theft—specifically through the colonization and theft of indigenous lands, and the mass kidnapping and wage theft of the Atlantic slave trade. The governments and agencies that now police the borders are institutions built on this stolen land.

The US imposition of NAFTA allowed heavily subsidized American agribusiness giants to flood the Mexican market with cheap corn, which decimated Mexican agricultural communities, drove small farmers off their land, and triggered massive waves of migration.

In Central America, the CIA sponsored the 1954 coup in Guatemala to overthrow a government that was attempting land reforms that threatened the profits of the American-owned United Fruit Company. The US government also heavily funded brutal military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala that committed massacres and genocide against their own citizens. The US government effectively bankrolled the destruction of these countries, and then militarized its border to punish the survivors fleeing the devastation.

The migrant walking from Ecuador is not a "glorious immigrant" immune to state violence; they are treated as walking meat by human trafficking cartels and hunted by authorities.

	▲	mothballed 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Name a single case of a parent being prosecuted for negligence, or even having their children taken away by the state for the dangers endured in the Darien Gap. They are treated like kid gloves compared to how a US parent is treated if they exposed their children to such risks in moving. No one is claiming the US didn't fuck up South/Central America, your point there is a red herring (US also spent hundreds of years stealing from its own poor too, and especially the slaves who might be the ancestors of those looking to move, so join the club). It's not that they haven't suffered risks and dangers and "500 years" of historical grudges. It's that the main risk a broke American parent has of moving their children while broke is that they're going to run afoul of negligence and abuse laws of the US that don't allow you to live in the rough while hopping freight trains or however broke people are crossing the continent. If your kids get ripped away in a river you are going to jail, if you're caught living in tents in the forest or desert then child services is going to be contacted. Immigrants get to bypass this on the way to the US -- if their children dies in a river in the Darien it either gets ignored by greater society or written in a news blurb about how brave and unfortunate they were (maybe alongside your sad story about NAFTA -- your sob story narrative makes my point). This means they can actually move while broke and they might actually be able to get away with it in the eyes of the state.

▲

Swoerd 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

▲

washingupliquid 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

▲

rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For Californians, or everyone else?

▲

dan353hehe 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm guessing you have never driven though Nevada.

	▲	washingupliquid 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> driven Yes, unlike the Darien, Nevada has a few roads for the Californians to sneak in and out.