When you set the house on fire do you get to become a hero for dialing 911 , does the arrival of the fire engines negate any responsibility that you and your Bic lighter may hold and does the fire department get blamed if they arrive too late to save the house ? … I’m just just askin’
Usually when someone finds out about our connections to Colombia the wife and I field the same old cliche questions about whether it’s safe to travel there or not. This week I was refreshed by a totally different though appropriate question when someone interestingly asked
” What do the Colombians think about the border crisis? ”
” Which border crisis , there’s or ours ? ” I asked
Like most Americans he seemed unaware that other nations may suffer an incursion on their frontier just like us and I was more than happy to offer a couple of barely known facts on the topic even though I realize that facts are generally meaningless as of late. He held a common belief that Colombia was urging migrants north on treks through the jungle thus effectively ridding themselves of a problem, and maybe they are . Just like flying them from Texas to Nantucket . For right now lets just talk about Venezuelans as they are one of the fastest growing groups of recent migrants and throw some numbers into the fray just for the sake of enlightenment . Present estimates put the amount of Venezuelans in the United States at around 545,000 . That may sound a lot even to a nation with a population of well over 334 million and it is, but little Colombia with its population of only 53 million is presently hosting some 2.8 million Venezuelans who have abandoned their homes to find refuge . 2.8 million in Colombia with another 3 million in Colombia’s neighboring country’s , Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil, that are all suffering a border problem of their own and it’s likely they hold little sympathy for ours. And why should they ?
I have a Brother in Law in Colombia who has a disability and so attempts to support himself as best as he’s capable by selling coffee at the big park in the center of the city. He’s up early to make several thermos bottles of coffee to sell at about .20 cents a cup seven days a week. Historically his competition was a dozen other vendors hawking their coffee but the huge influx of Venezuelano’s has changed that. Each year I visit it is easy to see there are more and more Venezuelan coffee vendors trying to scratch a living out of .20 cents a cup . The Colombians are all very aware that the leadership in neighboring Venezuela have been poor stewards of their nations economy creating hardship across the neighboring border but one man selling empanada’s in the park enlightened me further
” It gets worse for everyone , them and us , every time your American President imposes more sanctions on Venezuela it forces more of them to come here . The economic sanctions hurt them but it hurts Colombians too . Now there are so many of them here selling empanada’s it’s difficult for me to get by . ”
On paper the thought of helping the people of Venezuela rid themselves of an inefficient tyrant by helping destroy their economy might sound noble but it has one very serious drawback. It didn’t work. It only added to the reasons millions needed to escape the hardships and try to make it to the promised land of the U.S. border . It didn’t work now and after 60 years of the same tactics it’s proven a failure in Cuba helping create the need of Cubans to find our shores . Apparently we are slow learners and that perhaps a different tack would be better. Now the latest answer to the problem on our border is to deport en mass and ship them all back to the same unsolved problem they left which is the same problem we ourselves helped make worse . So back to square one and hope the wall works better next time because that’s what we just voted for , a feel good moment but not a solution .
So, back to the man’s question…
What does the average Colombian think of the U.S. border crisis ?
…… nothing , we’ve helped give them one of their own to think about
