The entire "migrant to border" story is complex and confusing. Let's add more to the confusion and the Haitians to Nicaragua angle:
Nicaragua has long been used as a migratory springboard for people fleeing struggling nations like Cuba and Mauritania in Africa, because it is one of the few countries that doesn't require visas for many of them to enter.
Such flights from Cuba were already gaining steam late last year amid a historic exodus from the island.
In August, Orozco said the Nicaraguan government allowed charter airlines to carry out the flights.
The journeys are not on official air routes, but flight tracking data that has been analyzed by Orozco and The Associated Press shows that 268 of the charter flights went from Haiti to Nicaragua since the beginning of August.
The charter airlines have flown as many as 31,000 people out of Haiti, which would represent nearly 60 percent of the Haitians arriving to the U.S. border, Orozco's data shows.
Over the same period, some 172 flights have carried 17,000 people from Cuba to Nicaragua.
The Associated Press spoke to three Haitian migrants who were aboard the charter flights, who said they doled out thousands of dollars to leave the poorest country in the hemisphere in hopes of reaching the United States.
Orozco said most tickets range between $3,000 and $5,000 a seat.
Again, where does a Haitian or Cuban get money like that? I know a thing or two about the current state of Cuba. I don't think that there are a lot of Cubans who can write a check or put that kind of money on their credit card.
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So how are they paying that kind of money? Who is behind this? Is someone advancing the money and expecting to get paid once they are in the U.S.? I don't know but it's all very strange to me.
Another question. Are these governments sending people because they've grown accustomed to remittances? We know that Mexico gets billions annually and that keeps a lot of Mexicans surviving from month to month. Check these numbers:
Remittances to Mexico reached $61.1 billion in 2022, representing an increase of 12.9 percent. Mexico received the highest level of remittances in the region by far and is the world’s second-largest recipient of remittances. The growth of remittances varied widely across countries in 2022, ranging from a rise of 50 percent in Nicaragua to 18 percent in Guatemala, 17.8 percent in Honduras, and 9.7 percent in Colombia. Remittances to Nicaragua surged by 50 percent during this period, driven by the country’s political situation. However, remittances constitute a much larger share of GDP for a number of countries in the Caribbean and Central America.
So these countries have figured something out? Send people and they send remittances back.
We've come a long way from our family leaving Cuba because my parents wanted freedom in their children's future to this scam where migrants are sent to the U.S. to send the money that keeps corrupt governments in place. Am I too cynical or on target?