Sonya Dooley in the USA – Border Wars
BBC (2013)
Film Review
Most Sonya Dooley documentaries are contextless valley girl puff pieces, but this one isn’t too bad.
Border Wars is about the one million migrants who attempt to cross the Sonora Desert every year to gain illegal entry to the US. The Mexico-Arizona border is sparsely patrolled in the desert. The US Border Patrol catches approximately 300,000 illegal migrants every year and returns them to Mexico. An estimated 600,000 make it safely to major US cities, where they find work. Several thousands become lost during the five day desert crossing and die of dehydration.
The documentary begins in the small Mexican town of Alta, which is under the control of Mexican drug cartels. In addition to smuggling illegal drugs across the border, the cartels also provide the coyotes (people smugglers) who charge up to $7,000 each to escort migrants across the border.
Dooley interviews migrants staying in a charity hostel while they wait for their coyote. She also visits a Red Cross trailer that provides free medical care, as well as an informational leaflet providing tips for surviving the five-day desert crossing.
Two migrants she interviews are mothers leaving small children behind because she has no way to provide for them in Mexico. Her only hope is to try to find subsistence-level work in the US and send money home for them.
One man Dooley interviews was raised in the US and deported after twenty years, despite having a US-born wife and children. Several migrants tell her they’re from Guatemala.
Out of the seven migrants she profiles, only one succeeds in making it to California, where she now earns $300 a week as a farm worker. To earn a comparable sum in her southern Mexico village would take two months.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
All this is quite mind boggling!
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It’s very distressing indeed, Aunty. Especially since it’s mainly NAFTA and US support for corrupt Latin American dictators that have deprived these migrants of their livelihood to begin with.
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http://lisahavennews.net/2015/12/02/what-they-plan-to-do-to-americans-and-why-its-crucial-you-know-about-it/
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Interesting about the FEMA camps. The first I heard of them was under the Reagan administration. At the time I was told that Edwin Meese had authorized them to be built in his National Security Council role. I guess Reagan was concerned about the Berkeley riots that occurred when he was California governor and didn’t want a repeat under his presidency.
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Pingback: Migrants Who Cross the Deadly Sonora Desert, Film and Review | Talesfromthelou
The good news is a lot of immigrants our returning to there home country and spreading the word that American St. are not paved in Gold
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Apparently Pew Research has just done a study showing a steady decline since the 2007 peak: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/what-we-know-about-illegal-immigration-from-mexico/
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Most people cannot imagine the abject poverty the impels people to cross the border into the US. I worked as a labor & delivery nurse in Deming, NM – 30 miles from the border. We had to deliver women’s babies as international law. Those babies were born as American citizens. Many of their mothers were not only poor but extremely uneducated even in self-care. All Mexicans are not poor nor do they want to come here. But the presence of all of this wealth when you can’t afford to pay the equivalent of $200.00 to deliver your baby leads people to take those dangerous journeys.
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It’s interesting to hear about your background in this area, Skywalker. Many Americans never have personal contact with this level of poverty. In my experience, it can be totally life changing.
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