6 ms·

There is no way, literally a 0 chance 72,000 is near anything to average. Just an exception. That's years of salary in those countries and no you can't even sav

There is no way, literally a 0 chance 72,000 is near anything to average. Just an exception. That's years of salary in those countries and no you can't even save that in a decade there

alephnerd 2y ago
> The second, serving migrants from India, offers charter flights to Central America and overland transfers to the U.S. border for between 6 million ($72,000) and 8 million rupees ($96,000) per person – in many instances with full payment due after arrival in the U.S, according to Indian court documents and K.T. Kamariya, a deputy superintendent of police in the western Indian state of Gujarat investigating illegal migration. Not every undocumented migrant is poor - especially those coming from Asia and taking the Central American pathway, which is what this investigation by Reuters is about. This is the Reuters investigation into the India-Dubai-France-El Salvador-Mexico route that was disrupted by French intelligence recently - https://apnews.com/article/france-indians-plane-grounded-human-trafficking-147e6408f2df4ec26a7033cb2c429424 https://apnews.com/article/france-indians-plane-grounded-hum... Destitute Asians immigrate illegally to the Gulf, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia - where salaries, living standards, and protections for the poor and undocumented are horrid. They don't have the funds to fly to and get a visa to much of Central America (at minimum a $4-7k endeavor with an additional $6-8k to go donkey from there to the border). That is middle and upper middle class money in a lot of Asia.
- atemerev 2y ago
  Well, they are doing it voluntarily — meaning that living standards at their home countries are even more horrid.
  - ta20240528 2y ago
    My personal observation is that its not today's living standards that is their concern, but fear of what tomorrow's living standards will be that drives most of this migration amongst the youth..
  - ClumsyPilot 2y ago
    That’s the thing, with that kind of money, no. Most people do not realise that living standards I. The west aren’t that great any more for an average nobody.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  Those who are not poor are usually better at legal* loopholes. Having watched No Country for Old Men (in which a bunch of characters are perfectly horrid to each other for amazingly small amounts of money), I'd suspect dropping 14k somewhere like Henley&Partners might offer better options than the reported 70k for one of these packages? * are they discovered or are they invented? this is a question of philosophy among the community serving (U)HNWIs. EDIT: on the other hand, if the objective were avoiding even a hint of KYC (as in 935 Pennsylvania's NOC theory of "illegals"), maybe these pathways would make sense?
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Those who are not poor are usually better at legal* loopholes > I'd suspect dropping 14k somewhere like Henley&Partners might offer better options than the reported 70k for one of these packages My Tau's land in the old country is now valued at $100-150k thanks to a highway expansion tender and can generate $15k a year being rented out to Reliance Jio as a gas pump, and the remaining land is still tilled and gets MSP benefits of $5k. That's a passive income if $20k/yr in a small Himalayan village. My Tau has a high school education and has never heard of the American legal system or investors visas. This is a common story with the rural middle and upper class. With that level of money, it's very easy to make a successful business in India, China, or Vietnam, but a mix of ignorance and Social Media convinces gullible people that this is the only way.
qeternity 2y ago
I think it's common for people to take huge loans from the traffickers. So it's not really $72k up front. It's some smaller amount + a cut of what you earn once you're working in the higher income country. Horrific nonetheless.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  In Punjab+Haryana+JK+HP (where most of the migrants on the route are from), these loans are backed by large land holdings that are already worth $100-200k. A $70-100k loan is affordable when you have land worth $200k and semi-passive income of around $7-20k (fairly common for LANDED agrarians in Northwest India) The issue is some people are ignorant and don't realize that they can deploy capital in a much more efficient manner (eg. Go to college, start a factory, grow organics, buy property in Mohali) and fall prey to advertisements on social media about how you can earn $75,000 a year as a janitor illegally (not realizing that income tax is a thing AND undocumented laborers would be paid way less).
  - gtirloni 2y ago
    This is an honest question since I know nothing about these tax systems, but are illegal immigrants able to open bank accounts and thus fall under the supervision of the tax authority? EDIT: thanks for all your insights here, I learned something today which is cool. I can't help but be a bit philosophical about this thinking that illegal imigrants are denied citizenship (which, to be honest, I think is fine and would prefer the legal route for something like this) but the government is happy to collect its payment from them.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      All you need is a valid form of government ID (eg. passport, driver's license) and a source of income to open a bank account without immediately getting AMLed. That said, most undocumented migrants don't understand these complex systems and will go unbanked by being cash first or using hawala networks
    - gruez 2y ago
em500 2y ago
> That's years of salary in those countries But not in the US, which is what makes migrating so attractive (and the price so high) in the first place. > and no you can't even save that in a decade there There are many ways around that (loans, pooling family income/assets), as other have pointed out. (It's not entirely unlike the cost of US college, which the average US student probably can't save in a decade either.)
- repelsteeltje 2y ago
  Indeed pooling, loans and I've also selling off the most fertile pieces of land to a wealthy neighbour - in (vain) hope of quickly being able to return wealth accumulated once arriving in the US.
roenxi 2y ago
It isn't so crazy, a US citizenship is worth quite a lot of money. It is pretty obvious that just walking in and settling in the US will lead to that sooner or later - based on the stats I've seen the sheer volume of people involved makes any sort of expulsion program infeasible. I personally would consider this as an option if I wanted to migrate to the US. Probably wouldn't take it; I don't like risk or rule dodging. But there is something to be said for it. From a distance it looks like a relatively low-risk high-reward approach to migration and I can imagine even if it is a terrible choice a bunch of people in the global middle class would take it out of confusion and optimism.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  What makes you think citizenship is inevitable just because mass deportation is impossible? It seems more likely that people will just be in an irregular state forever (as has always been the case for a lot of illegal immigrants in the U.S. even before the present wave).
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Something like 3% of the population of the US are illegal immigrants. I'd be happy to gamble on that being too many people to expel. And although maybe there wouldn't be an official citizenship you'd get all the benefits of living in the US with confidence your kids would be full citizens. Thinking it through I doubt it'd be for me - but there must be a lot of people in South East Asia for whom it'd look like a reasonable gamble at ~$100k. That wouldn't make up the bulk of the migrants, obviously, but there is a value proposition to justify the money.
    - School-Cotton 2y ago
      So it basically sounds like you completely agree with me? I was not disputing that expelling all the illegal immigrants in the US is probably impossible. I was disputing that they'd become citizens. > you'd get all the benefits of living in the US There are more benefits to US citizenship than "not being deported". Illegal immigrants certainly don't have all the same benefits a citizen (or even legal immigrant) has.
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
Unlike the west where families don't help each other. 72k USD is easily accomplished by big 20 plus member families pooling money together to pay a mule to have one member get in America . Because they know once he gets status they ALL will be allowed to come thanks to the generous family entrance rules. So no, this isn't the exception. This is the norm. They'll then pool their cash to buy a 4 bedroom house and live 25 in it because that's what real families in developing countries do.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
You are really underestimating the motivation some people have. I mean legally immigrating to UK can easily cost £30,000 for a family just in direct fees to government, lawyers and in various surcharges.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > legally immigrating to UK can easily cost £30,000 for a family just in direct fees to government, lawyers and in various surcharges. Just moving between states in the US can require a third of that.
_heimdall 2y ago
Is that really an annual salary in the countries some migrants are leaving? The average US household income is around $76k, I wouldn't have expected that income level to be a salary in those countries.
migrantsmigrate 2y ago
They're probably going indentured to someone or to an organization that they'll be paying off for a decade or so. My cousin payed someone to get a work visa to Canada from North Africa, which cost about $15k. Although the first time she did it it was a scam and she lost all of that money, which was pretty devastating for her. Another cousin payed a coyote to get him to Europe (via Greece), and that was cheaper, but they also left the boat for dead in the Mediterranean and he ended up getting deported back to North Africa. So yeah, $72k is a lot, but if you're desperate and it's not all upfront, I can see it happening.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  For the Indians who are taking this route they are not. My family is from one of those villages where immigration (documented and undocumented) to the West has been common since the 1970s. The ones who are truly desperate (the rural poor and working class) cannot afford to immigrate illegally to the West so they end up immigrating to the Gulf, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or South Korea to work as unskilled laborers. The only people who take these routes in Northwest India are those who area weird mix of landed (so rich as they have a high value asset that can be mortgaged) and ignorant. Oftentimes a healthy dose of "stunting" as well, because even if the guy immigrated abroad illegally, they can at least get a wedding offer now whereas before they were a NEET.
mcphage 2y ago
If you have family members who entered in the past and are sending money home, some can be saved from that.

There is no way, literally a 0 chance 72,000 is near anything to average. Just an exception. That's years of salary in those countries and no you can't even save that in a decade there

alephnerd 2y ago

> The second, serving migrants from India, offers charter flights to Central America and overland transfers to the U.S. border for between 6 million ($72,000) and 8 million rupees ($96,000) per person – in many instances with full payment due after arrival in the U.S, according to Indian court documents and K.T. Kamariya, a deputy superintendent of police in the western Indian state of Gujarat investigating illegal migration. Not every undocumented migrant is poor - especially those coming from Asia and taking the Central American pathway, which is what this investigation by Reuters is about. This is the Reuters investigation into the India-Dubai-France-El Salvador-Mexico route that was disrupted by French intelligence recently - https://apnews.com/article/france-indians-plane-grounded-human-trafficking-147e6408f2df4ec26a7033cb2c429424 https://apnews.com/article/france-indians-plane-grounded-hum... Destitute Asians immigrate illegally to the Gulf, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia - where salaries, living standards, and protections for the poor and undocumented are horrid. They don't have the funds to fly to and get a visa to much of Central America (at minimum a $4-7k endeavor with an additional $6-8k to go donkey from there to the border). That is middle and upper middle class money in a lot of Asia.

atemerev 2y ago
Well, they are doing it voluntarily — meaning that living standards at their home countries are even more horrid.
- ta20240528 2y ago
  My personal observation is that its not today's living standards that is their concern, but fear of what tomorrow's living standards will be that drives most of this migration amongst the youth..
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  That’s the thing, with that kind of money, no. Most people do not realise that living standards I. The west aren’t that great any more for an average nobody.
082349872349872 2y ago
Those who are not poor are usually better at legal* loopholes. Having watched No Country for Old Men (in which a bunch of characters are perfectly horrid to each other for amazingly small amounts of money), I'd suspect dropping 14k somewhere like Henley&Partners might offer better options than the reported 70k for one of these packages? * are they discovered or are they invented? this is a question of philosophy among the community serving (U)HNWIs. EDIT: on the other hand, if the objective were avoiding even a hint of KYC (as in 935 Pennsylvania's NOC theory of "illegals"), maybe these pathways would make sense?
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Those who are not poor are usually better at legal* loopholes > I'd suspect dropping 14k somewhere like Henley&Partners might offer better options than the reported 70k for one of these packages My Tau's land in the old country is now valued at $100-150k thanks to a highway expansion tender and can generate $15k a year being rented out to Reliance Jio as a gas pump, and the remaining land is still tilled and gets MSP benefits of $5k. That's a passive income if $20k/yr in a small Himalayan village. My Tau has a high school education and has never heard of the American legal system or investors visas. This is a common story with the rural middle and upper class. With that level of money, it's very easy to make a successful business in India, China, or Vietnam, but a mix of ignorance and Social Media convinces gullible people that this is the only way.

qeternity 2y ago

I think it's common for people to take huge loans from the traffickers. So it's not really $72k up front. It's some smaller amount + a cut of what you earn once you're working in the higher income country. Horrific nonetheless.

alephnerd 2y ago
In Punjab+Haryana+JK+HP (where most of the migrants on the route are from), these loans are backed by large land holdings that are already worth $100-200k. A $70-100k loan is affordable when you have land worth $200k and semi-passive income of around $7-20k (fairly common for LANDED agrarians in Northwest India) The issue is some people are ignorant and don't realize that they can deploy capital in a much more efficient manner (eg. Go to college, start a factory, grow organics, buy property in Mohali) and fall prey to advertisements on social media about how you can earn $75,000 a year as a janitor illegally (not realizing that income tax is a thing AND undocumented laborers would be paid way less).
- gtirloni 2y ago
  This is an honest question since I know nothing about these tax systems, but are illegal immigrants able to open bank accounts and thus fall under the supervision of the tax authority? EDIT: thanks for all your insights here, I learned something today which is cool. I can't help but be a bit philosophical about this thinking that illegal imigrants are denied citizenship (which, to be honest, I think is fine and would prefer the legal route for something like this) but the government is happy to collect its payment from them.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    All you need is a valid form of government ID (eg. passport, driver's license) and a source of income to open a bank account without immediately getting AMLed. That said, most undocumented migrants don't understand these complex systems and will go unbanked by being cash first or using hawala networks
  - gruez 2y ago

em500 2y ago

> That's years of salary in those countries But not in the US, which is what makes migrating so attractive (and the price so high) in the first place. > and no you can't even save that in a decade there There are many ways around that (loans, pooling family income/assets), as other have pointed out. (It's not entirely unlike the cost of US college, which the average US student probably can't save in a decade either.)

repelsteeltje 2y ago
Indeed pooling, loans and I've also selling off the most fertile pieces of land to a wealthy neighbour - in (vain) hope of quickly being able to return wealth accumulated once arriving in the US.

roenxi 2y ago

It isn't so crazy, a US citizenship is worth quite a lot of money. It is pretty obvious that just walking in and settling in the US will lead to that sooner or later - based on the stats I've seen the sheer volume of people involved makes any sort of expulsion program infeasible. I personally would consider this as an option if I wanted to migrate to the US. Probably wouldn't take it; I don't like risk or rule dodging. But there is something to be said for it. From a distance it looks like a relatively low-risk high-reward approach to migration and I can imagine even if it is a terrible choice a bunch of people in the global middle class would take it out of confusion and optimism.

School-Cotton 2y ago
What makes you think citizenship is inevitable just because mass deportation is impossible? It seems more likely that people will just be in an irregular state forever (as has always been the case for a lot of illegal immigrants in the U.S. even before the present wave).
- roenxi 2y ago
  Something like 3% of the population of the US are illegal immigrants. I'd be happy to gamble on that being too many people to expel. And although maybe there wouldn't be an official citizenship you'd get all the benefits of living in the US with confidence your kids would be full citizens. Thinking it through I doubt it'd be for me - but there must be a lot of people in South East Asia for whom it'd look like a reasonable gamble at ~$100k. That wouldn't make up the bulk of the migrants, obviously, but there is a value proposition to justify the money.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    So it basically sounds like you completely agree with me? I was not disputing that expelling all the illegal immigrants in the US is probably impossible. I was disputing that they'd become citizens. > you'd get all the benefits of living in the US There are more benefits to US citizenship than "not being deported". Illegal immigrants certainly don't have all the same benefits a citizen (or even legal immigrant) has.

freitzkriesler2 2y ago

Unlike the west where families don't help each other. 72k USD is easily accomplished by big 20 plus member families pooling money together to pay a mule to have one member get in America . Because they know once he gets status they ALL will be allowed to come thanks to the generous family entrance rules. So no, this isn't the exception. This is the norm. They'll then pool their cash to buy a 4 bedroom house and live 25 in it because that's what real families in developing countries do.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago

You are really underestimating the motivation some people have. I mean legally immigrating to UK can easily cost £30,000 for a family just in direct fees to government, lawyers and in various surcharges.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> legally immigrating to UK can easily cost £30,000 for a family just in direct fees to government, lawyers and in various surcharges. Just moving between states in the US can require a third of that.

_heimdall 2y ago

Is that really an annual salary in the countries some migrants are leaving? The average US household income is around $76k, I wouldn't have expected that income level to be a salary in those countries.

migrantsmigrate 2y ago

They're probably going indentured to someone or to an organization that they'll be paying off for a decade or so. My cousin payed someone to get a work visa to Canada from North Africa, which cost about $15k. Although the first time she did it it was a scam and she lost all of that money, which was pretty devastating for her. Another cousin payed a coyote to get him to Europe (via Greece), and that was cheaper, but they also left the boat for dead in the Mediterranean and he ended up getting deported back to North Africa. So yeah, $72k is a lot, but if you're desperate and it's not all upfront, I can see it happening.

alephnerd 2y ago
For the Indians who are taking this route they are not. My family is from one of those villages where immigration (documented and undocumented) to the West has been common since the 1970s. The ones who are truly desperate (the rural poor and working class) cannot afford to immigrate illegally to the West so they end up immigrating to the Gulf, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or South Korea to work as unskilled laborers. The only people who take these routes in Northwest India are those who area weird mix of landed (so rich as they have a high value asset that can be mortgaged) and ignorant. Oftentimes a healthy dose of "stunting" as well, because even if the guy immigrated abroad illegally, they can at least get a wedding offer now whereas before they were a NEET.

mcphage 2y ago

If you have family members who entered in the past and are sending money home, some can be saved from that.