Chasing the American dream has had severe consequences for many Gujaratis in recent times. The tragedies in St Lawrence and Dingucha are documented in bold letters. A few Gujarati families attempted to illegally cross the US through Canada, a rendezvous zone as it’s called, and paid the price with their lives.
Let’s recap the recent events. A family of four from Dingucha village, including two children, froze to death at the Canadian border. They reportedly couldn’t survive -35°C temperature for hours.
Last month, Canadian coast guards recovered eight bodies, including that of Gujaratis, identified as Pravin Chaudhary, 50, and his two children Vidhi, 24, and Mitkumar, 20, from Mehsana. According to reports, they were trying to enter the US through the St Lawrence River on the border between US and Canada.
In January last year, Jagdish Patel from Dingucha village in north Gujarat along with wife Vaishali, daughter Vihangi, and son Dharmik froze to death near Emerson, Canada. In December of the same year, 36-year-old Brijkumar Yadav from Chhatral in Kalol taluka of Gandhinagar died while climbing the Trump Wall on the US-Mexico border.
A startling reality emerges from the US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) data, which should serve as an eyeopener for Gujaratis obsessed with the make-believe world of the US. A leading daily, citing the data, reports that as many as 1.49 lakh Indians were caught trying to illegally cross into the US between February 2019 and March 2023. It adds that there had been 2,663 attempts of infiltration either through the Canadian or the Mexican borders. Indians, the data reveals, comprise 2% of the total people caught entering the US illegally.
Furthermore, the report adds that in January last year, 5,459 Indians were caught entering the US illegally. As many as 708 were caught at the US-Canada border. Not that the fatalities acted as an alarm bell. Quite shockingly, the numbers are on the rise. The numbers have gone up by 35.9% to 7,421 in January 2023. The report adds that 2,478 arrests have been made on the US-Canada border.
Quite clearly, Indians, especially Gujaratis, aren’t learning from the tragedies that have occurred in pursuit of the US glamour.
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