Posted on 06/27/2019 6:21:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
You’ve probably seen the photo by now. A father and daughter from El Salvador washed up on the Mexican shore of the Rio Grande Monday after trying to cross the river. The little girl was not quite two years old. The image is tragic and hard to look at. Today the Associated Press offered some additional background on the story behind the image. The family left their country for economic reasons but planned to file an asylum claim anyway:
The young family from El Salvador appeared in this border city over the weekend with panic on their faces.
They went to the downtown bridge that leads to Brownsville, Texas, where Xiomara Mejia, a migrant from Honduras, explained that the newcomers would not be able to add their names to the long list of families waiting to apply for asylum in the United States until Monday…
“They said to me, ‘You haven’t tried to cross the river?’” Mejia said. “We said to them, ‘No,’ because of the children more than anything. I don’t know how to swim and my kids do, but either way I’m not going to risk it.”…
“I didn’t think they were going to decide to cross the river,” Mejia said.
But they didn’t wait to add their names to the list. Like a lot of migrants, they decided to cross the border on their own. They attempted to cross the Rio Grande in a spot where it is narrow but fast moving. The husband, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, swam across with his 23-month-old daughter Valeria and set her down on the US side of the river. Then he started to swim back across to help his wife who was still waiting on the Mexican side. But when the little girl saw her dad leaving she apparently got scared and jumped into the water after him. He reversed course to rescue her and both of them were swept away by the current.
Again, it’s an awful, tragic story. It makes you wonder why someone would take such risk even after being warned it was dangerous. According to Oscar’s mother, he and his wife and daughter were not fleeing gang violence or state persecution, they were economic migrants coming to the US for a better life:
Martínez had shared a sea-green brick home with barred windows in San Martin on the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador, with his mother, his wife and their daughter.
In their working-class neighborhood of about 40,000 people, Martínez worked in a pizzeria and Ávalos was a cashier in a fast-food restaurant, said his mother, Rosa Ramírez.
The area has had problems with gang violence, but these days it’s calm, she said. She said her son never had any problems with gangs, and he left with his family for economic reasons.
Ramírez said she had given them the big room in the two-bedroom house, but they dreamed of saving money for a place of their own and the dream drove the family to head for the United States in early April.
“I told him, ‘Son, don’t go. But if you do go, leave me the girl,'” Ramírez said.
Curiously, what Oscar’s mother said about her son not having any problems with gangs has now been removed from the AP’s story. Here’s how the revised version on the AP site reads:
The couple and their daughter had lived with Martinez’s mother in a sea-green brick home with barred windows in a working-class neighborhood of San Martin on the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador.
He worked in a pizzeria and she was a cashier in a fast-food restaurant, his mother, Rosa Ramírez, said.
Ramírez said she had given them the big room in the two-bedroom house, but they dreamed of saving money for a place of their own and decided to head for the United States in early April.
“I told him, ‘Son, don’t go. But if you do go, leave me the girl,’” Ramírez said.
The line about them being economic migrants is gone. Why was it removed?
Having an economic motive for migrating to the US doesn’t make the death of a father and his young daughter any less tragic. But it does highlight an aspect of what is happening at the border that Democrats and the media have often seemed eager to ignore (the AP seems to be whitewashing it even now).
Central Americans who want a better life in America are gaming our immigration system by the thousands every day, completely overwhelming the system. Claims of asylum do not extend to economic migrants, but these migrants have learned that if they cross the border and then turn themselves into Border Patrol and make an asylum claim, they won’t be deported. It’s a quick shortcut to get into the country and then get released. And that’s especially true if you’re traveling with a child.
And from what we know, it appears that’s exactly what Oscar and his family were doing. They were economic migrants who considered claiming asylum at a port of entry even though they had no real grounds for making such a claim. When that approach appeared to take too long, they tried to cross the river. Presumably, if they had all made it and were caught on the US side, they would have claimed asylum as they initially intended.
But the asylum process was not intended to apply to thousands of people per day who are, in fact, economic migrants. We don’t have enough Border Patrol agents to give “credible fear” interviews to all of these people and we definitely don’t have enough immigration judges to hear all of these cases in a timely manner. Most of these economic migrants will have their cases denied and many (at least 1/3 but possibly more) will have an adverse decision made in absentia because they won’t even show up for their hearing. In theory, they will be liable for deportation at that point but in practice, Democrats will scream about injustice whenever ICE tries to remove anyone for deportation who isn’t caught at the border.
What motivated Oscar and his family was the belief that he could have a better life in the US and that if he a) made it across the border unnoticed or b) got caught but made a bogus claim for asylum, he’d never have to leave the US. That’s not how our immigration system is supposed to work. Unfortunately, that’s how it does work at present and that loophole is leading tens of thousands of people to risk their lives and that of their children on a long and perilous journey to the United States.
Economic migrants. More Orwellian speak.
DemocRats’ fault.
“A father and daughter from El Salvador washed up on the Mexican shore of the Rio Grande Monday after trying to cross the river.”
Quick! Somebody photoshop Biden sniffing them!/sarc
The father made a poor choice and took a chance. What choice did Kate Steinle have?
Economic migrants!?! The ILLEGALS are aiming to freeload off of our messed up, overly generous system. The Democrats are at fault for ALL OF IT.
“Economic refugees” that is what all the US Homeless are. Should we provide free jobs, HC and housing for them first?
You want to stop this? Stop remittances, or tax them massively.
Build the wall, save them all.
They want illegals here cause it makes Trump look bad and they get votes.
What they fail to realize is that most Americans don’t want them here.
Illegals have no patience to wait their turn in line. For decades they have cut ahead of people trying to do it the right way. Had this man and daughter made it to the US they would have been ahead of all of those waiting at the Port of Entry waiting their turn to come in legally to be processed for asylum. If people enter illegally they have to be processed ASAP because they are in custody and due to court rulings have to be processed as fast as they can be.
There isn’t 1 in 1000 that have a legitimate asylum claim, they’re all here for money and the word is out that if they claim asylum they’ll be allowed to stay.
Yet another tragedy where the outcome is blamed on those not responsible.
Who knows what precipitated their drowning, but to point the finger at immigration policy is idiotic if not opportunistically malicious.
There’s only one reason the father brought his innocent child along: so he could turn her and himself in to the border patrol and be released into the US in three weeks. He had NO plans to show up for his hearing later. He, alone, is responsible for her death.
Maybe somebody can confirm it but I believe the little girl was inside her fathers t-shirt like she was riding on his back. Story said he placed her on the US side and went back when she got back in the water. I don’t believe he could have managed that with them both in fast moving water. Something doesn’t sound right. My bet is he stuffed her under his t-shirt, told her to hang on and went in the water hit the faster water and drowned both he and his daughter. He never got to the US side!
Pulled up the picture and she was inside his t-shirt, he didn’t put her there in an effort to save her while trying to save himself. From the looks of the picture the bodies had bloated and drifted to that spot telling me they had been underwater for at least 24 hours. I’m starting to think this was a staged event. I’ve been involved in three recoveries of drowning victims in my life and all had one thing in common, the bodies sank when they died. Two came to the surface withing 48 hours, the little twin girls were submerged and hung up in brush about 200 yards where they were swept into the water. This was due to their mother thinking she could drive through moving water across a road. When the air leaves the lungs they drop, it’s the gasses that build up within the body that brings them to the surface.
A dead man who is so stupid he cannot cross a river with his child is so intellectually deficient he is not fit to be an American anyway
I group the asylum seekers with the rest, those that come through the Port of Entry are at least doing it the right way. Most enter illegally to begin with so to me they are illegals, I don’t care what they claim once they get here.
You are right only a very, very small number actually qualify for asylum. Those coming know that too, that is why so many do not attend hearings and do paperwork after they get in. I call it the asylum scam because that is what it is in reality.
And we can count on seven+ less. Him, her and the (minimum) 5 she would have birthed before age 25.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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