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What happened next to the migrants targeted by nativist Greg Abbott? Here's one of their stories [1]
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Date: 2022-12-14
Among the migrants profiled in the “After The Buses” series is Yorvi Sánchez, who says he didn’t even tell his family he would be making the dangerous journey north. He’d initially left Venezuela for Peru, like many Venezuelans who have had to leave their homes under the authoritarian Maduro regime. But despite finding some work there, he dreamed of making it to America. That involved crossing the dangerous “Darién Gap, a jungle between Colombia and Panama.”
“The hardest part of the trip wasn’t crossing the jungle,” Sánchez commented, or even getting a gun pointed at him in Guatemala. “It was getting through Mexico because the immigration police there do not play,” he said in the report. “It was dangerous in Mexico. The police there just treated us badly.”
Alex V. Hernandez reports that once in Texas, Sánchez was told by officials he could go to either New York or Chicago. He chose the later, and ended up staying at a shelter with other migrants. After weeks of job searching that was stifled by language barriers, he found a job at a hotel kitchen.
The “After The Buses” profiles are a must-read when nativist politicians have consistently tried to frame migrants as terrifying, faceless hordes. Because when they erase someone’s humanity, it becomes much easier to demonize them.
Abbott, for example, has spent years using migrants as a political tool, including demonizing them to raise money. One letter that featured his name was sent out just one day before the 2018 El Paso terror attack by a white supremacist who hated Mexicans and had complained about a supposed “invasion,” a favorite topic of Abbott and other Republicans. You can always depend on Abbott being an anti-immigrant loudmouth, but when confronted about the letter, cat had his tongue and he at first refused to issue any comment.
Finally unable to avoid the backlash, he offered a non-apology apology. He’s so sorry that he’s now busing sick kids across the country to bolster his political credentials. He wants people to be afraid of Yorvi Sánchez, but never would he dare share Yorvi Sánchez’s actual story, because maybe people would side with the hard-working dad who trekked across countries for his family.
x "After the Buses" tells the stories of some of the 3,700 migrants who were bused to Chicago in a political stunt this year, a result of over three months of reporting and a partnership with @BlockClubCHI.
https://t.co/7j1xx7tK46 — Borderless Magazine (@Borderless_Mag) December 12, 2022
“I like the work, and I’m learning the hotel’s standards for the kitchen and serving customers,” Sánchez continued in the report. “And along the way I’m trying to pick up English, and being in a restaurant helps me with that, too.” He’s also made friends, which has helped with his loneliness. While many migrants arriving to the U.S. have relatives here, he has no one. He said it’ll make Christmas here especially difficult. “But at least with the work I’m finding here, I can send them money and my daughter a gift that she really wants,” he said.
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