LAT: Border Crossing Deaths Set a 12-Month Record

[DeepModem Mom]

Border Crossing Deaths Set a 12-Month Record
By Richard Marosi, Times Staff Writer


TUCSON — A record 460 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year, a toll pushed higher by unusually hot temperatures and a shift of illegal migration routes through remote deserts.

The death total from Oct. 1, 2004, through Sept. 29 surpassed the previous record of 383 deaths set in 2000, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Border Patrol.

The dead were mostly Mexicans, many from the states of Mexico, Guanajuato and Veracruz, but also from the impoverished Southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.

Migrants continue to die in automobile accidents and from drownings while crossing waterways into California and Texas, but 261, or more than half the total, perished while crossing the Arizona deserts, the busiest illegal immigrant corridor along the nation's 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

The migrants, herded across the border by smugglers, have been traversing increasingly desolate stretches of desert as the Border Patrol cuts off more accessible routes....


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deaths1oct01,0,1913222.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews

[Mika]

1. Its only Cubans who risk their lives coming to the USA, right?

How many times do we see/hear that posted by the Castrophobes on the Cuba threads?


Thanks for posting this sad story.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Mika, Miami Cuban writer, Max J. Castro's article on Cuban immigration

and Lincoln Diaz-Balart's last great brain spasm on the subject might be helpful for DU'ers who haven't heard much about our deranged policy.

http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Max_Castro&otherweek=1128142800

If you haven't read it, you'll be surprised to see at the very end, it indicates Max J. Castro reads D.U.! Yay! :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

[blindpig]

2. I couldn't help but notice

0 posts to 126 posts on Jodie Foster movie. Hmmm

[Judi Lynn]

3. Some of these migrants don't speak Spanish. Did not know this.

Makes me feel so stupid! The article says many of these workers are from indiginous populations and, not speaking Spanish, don't have access to smuggling networks, which could make things easier, somewhat. This would mean they are REALLY on their own. It's so sad.

A long, agonizing death by exposure to thirst and searing heat with no shade anywhere would be horrendous.

It would be a big help if the U.S. had not destroyed the livelihood of so many Mexican farmers by flooding Mexico with cheaper corn and sugar cane, rendering their own hard work in their own fields completely unprofitable. Where on earth are they SUPPOSED to go, when we take away their only sources of income?

[FlaGranny]

5. Do you have

a link for that = "flooding Mexico with cheaper corn and sugar cane"? I've always been under the impression that WE were getting flooded by cheaper vegetables from Mexico and South America. I could be wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.