Thinking of those immigrants who are originally from Mexico and travel to Canada requesting refugee status..
Who could be considered a refugee? Cuban immigrants to this day, almost 40 years after Castro's takeover can arrive on a boat and are automatically welcomed as refugees. A few days ago I saw photographs of two women who traveled from Cuba to Florida in a small boat. The interaction between them and the police was so different compared to when undocumented immigrants from other Latin American countries meet the police. What would happen if two women immigrants from Mexico got in a boat in Tampico and made their way to Post Isabel in Texas? You can bet the reception wouldn't be the same. The Cuban women were being comforted by police, given blankets. The Mexican women would be in handcuffs.
Perhaps we can learn from this. How were Cubans able to negotiate refugee status? If the bottom line is that they have to be persecuted in their home country. Then I ask, are all the Cubans that have immigrated individually persecuted? Over the years I have met a number of individuals who they or family members had to leave Mexico, El Salvador, or Guatemala because of persecution, the kind with a bullet to your head. Especially those from Central America who were children at school when men with guns burst in classrooms and took out their teacher and killed him or her...
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