From Associated Press:
Record number of African migrants coming to Mexican border
By ANDREW SELSKY and PATRICK WHITTLE
2 hours agoPORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Undaunted by a dangerous journey over thousands of miles, people fleeing economic hardship and human rights abuses in African countries are coming to the U.S.-Mexico border in unprecedented numbers, surprising Border Patrol agents more accustomed to Spanish-speaking migrants.
“Economic hardship and human rights abuses in African countries,” a.k.a., just another Tuesday in African countries.
Officials in Texas and even Maine are scrambling to absorb the sharp increase in African migrants. They are coming to America after flying across the Atlantic Ocean to South America and then embarking on an often harrowing overland journey.
In one recent week, agents in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector stopped more than 500 African migrants found walking in separate groups along the arid land after splashing across the Rio Grande, children in tow. …
Cameroonians generally fly to Ecuador because no visa is required and take about four months to reach Tijuana. They walk for days in Panama through dense jungle, where they are often robbed and held in government-run camps. They come from Cameroon’s English-speaking south with horrifying stories of rape, murder and torture committed since late 2016 by soldiers of the country’s French-speaking majority, which holds power.
Anglophone Liberation Now! Down with Francophone Tyranny!
You probably haven’t been keeping up with Cameroon’s English vs. French troubles, but they are Your Problem Now.
… Many were bused to Portland, Maine, about as far as one can get from the Mexican border and still be in the continental United States. Word has spread among migrants that the city of 67,000 is a welcoming place. Somali refugees were resettled in Portland in the 1990s.
… Portland officials tweeted Thursday that rumors some of the migrants are carrying the Ebola virus “are patently false,” and said that as asylum seekers, they are in the United States legally.
On Thursday afternoon, families in the Expo chatted in French and Portuguese as children kicked a soccer ball near rows of cots. One of the men, 26-year-old Prince Pombo, described himself as a pro-democracy activist and said he had fled his native country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, because of political oppression. He went to neighboring Angola, then flew to Brazil. There, he met a local woman and they had a baby they named Heaven.
Nickname: “Meal Ticket.”
Now 16-months old, she giggled as she played with her mother in the Expo. Pombo said his journey from Congo to America took three years. …
Mbi Deric Ambi, from the English-speaking part of Cameroon, is among them. … “We don’t have jobs in the English part, the educational system is poor, they are looking at us as dogs…”
The United States of America is of course the closest English-speaking country to Cameroon.
By the way, the United Nation’s 2019 World Population Projections will be released on Monday. It will be interesting to see how many media outlets draw any connection between the UN’s forecast of African population growth and what is happening at the border.
