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There's also some double standards. If you walk from Ecuador to Texas, passing through the Darien Gap and one of your kids gets ripped into some river never to be seen again, finally showing up in El Paso to sleep under a bridge until the heat exhaustion goes away, then you are a glorious immigrant who put it all on the line to give your family a better life.

If you hitch-hike from California to Vermont while feeding your kids whatever rats and river water you can dredge up and then set up a tent in the forest until you can score a job at Dollar General, then you are an evil neglectful bastard and the state will be on your ass and take your kids away.

You might be better off actually moving countries if you are broke. Because for whatever reason it is better tolerated because you can just say you were broke and your children went through hard times because the last country was evil or something.

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> you are a glorious immigrant who put it all on the line to give your family a better life

According to whom?

The immense hardship endured by migrants isn't a badge of glory, but the direct result of a global economic system designed to extract wealth from the global south to enrich the global north.

The current economic disparity between the United States and the countries to its south is not an accident. The wealth of the United States, like much of the Western Hemisphere, was built on a foundation of 500 years of ongoing theft—specifically through the colonization and theft of indigenous lands, and the mass kidnapping and wage theft of the Atlantic slave trade. The governments and agencies that now police the borders are institutions built on this stolen land.

The US imposition of NAFTA allowed heavily subsidized American agribusiness giants to flood the Mexican market with cheap corn, which decimated Mexican agricultural communities, drove small farmers off their land, and triggered massive waves of migration.

In Central America, the CIA sponsored the 1954 coup in Guatemala to overthrow a government that was attempting land reforms that threatened the profits of the American-owned United Fruit Company. The US government also heavily funded brutal military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala that committed massacres and genocide against their own citizens. The US government effectively bankrolled the destruction of these countries, and then militarized its border to punish the survivors fleeing the devastation.

The migrant walking from Ecuador is not a "glorious immigrant" immune to state violence; they are treated as walking meat by human trafficking cartels and hunted by authorities.

Name a single case of a parent being prosecuted for negligence, or even having their children taken away by the state for the dangers endured in the Darien Gap. They are treated like kid gloves compared to how a US parent is treated if they exposed their children to such risks in moving. No one is claiming the US didn't fuck up South/Central America, your point there is a red herring (US also spent hundreds of years stealing from its own poor too, and especially the slaves who might be the ancestors of those looking to move, so join the club).

It's not that they haven't suffered risks and dangers and "500 years" of historical grudges. It's that the main risk a broke American parent has of moving their children while broke is that they're going to run afoul of negligence and abuse laws of the US that don't allow you to live in the rough while hopping freight trains or however broke people are crossing the continent. If your kids get ripped away in a river you are going to jail, if you're caught living in tents in the forest or desert then child services is going to be contacted. Immigrants get to bypass this on the way to the US -- if their children dies in a river in the Darien it either gets ignored by greater society or written in a news blurb about how brave and unfortunate they were (maybe alongside your sad story about NAFTA -- your sob story narrative makes my point). This means they can actually move while broke and they might actually be able to get away with it in the eyes of the state.

I feel like you struggle with the concept of "jurisdiction", and if we were going to look at the holistic picture, rather than charging foreign refugees with child endangerment, we'd be offering them reparations eg subsidizing schooling the way USAID used to until Lord Musk and the DOGE boys took a chainsaw to it.

I still think it's ridiculous that you refer to ICE detention as "kid gloves."

Again, rather than ignoring migrant families, the US government actively targets them; ICE uses Palantir surveillance software to track down and arrest hundreds of parents and relatives simply because they stepped forward to sponsor their unaccompanied migrant children, and now thousands of children are currently in the US foster care system because their parents were deported without them.

You are right, though, that marginalized US citizens face aggressive state intervention and child separation. The US criminal justice and child welfare systems frequently target poor domestic parents, using the threat of child removal to coerce them or punish them.

For example, marginalized women facing minor charges or accused of drug use have faced secret child welfare proceedings, incarceration, and having their newborns placed directly into the foster care system. Domestically, the carceral system routinely tears families apart, leaving hundreds of thousands of parents locked in jail and missing from their children's lives.

Yes being under the jurisdiction of the evil USA obviously increases your risk profile while you're in the move. I don't understand why you think that's off the table. That's the whole point. It's legally impermissible to have your kids hopping freight trains and living in the desert in the USA while you move. The USA has the highest per capita of people in jail or under supervision and they aggressively pursue the tiniest infractions, unlike someplace like Mexico or Panama.

You're going to point out that's illegal in random latin american country too. Except the state apparatus is far weaker and more corrupt there, so there's actually a chance to bribe your way around it or just pass through the cracks.

The whole point is to end up with your family in the end, except if nature or criminals take them away, but if in the end the state breaks up the surviving family then you're heading for a dead end regardless. Latin American countries aren't breaking up families to anything near the extent the US does. The USA's bread and butter is breaking up families using the might of the state and they can't do that while you're out of their jurisdiction. If you can stay out of their jurisdiction for most of the move, you can bypass the CPS apparatus in the meanwhile. It actually might be better to go through Mexico to move from say California to Texas while broke, for that reason.

If you want to point out post-move if you are present illegally that might get you tossed out, then sure. But that's the case about everywhere but Argentina, Brazil, and back-bush Africa. A domestic family can also get tossed out for being here illegally (renounced citizenship, or whatever). That's another red herring though. ICE doesn't enforce moving without money, they enforce being present in the USA illegally (or, occasionally, legally, a la Goode / Pretti). If you get the visa to enter the USA, they won't give a single shit about all the kids that got ripped into some river in the Darien, died of some tropical disease while camped without mosquito nets, or all manner of other things they would damn a domestic family for.

> You're going to point out that's illegal in random latin american country too.

No, I'm not. I'm done reading your lazy bullshit.

It's hilarious how fast your interest in latin american conditions of migrants vaporizes as soon as it's not furthering your agenda of 'reparations' or '500 years of' various grudges. You accuse me of intellectual laziness, but you're unable to do anything other than a brain-dead echo chamber of progressive grievances when confronted with an entirely other subject, clinging on to your little red herring for dear life hoping it will throw off the subject and keep you in your safe space with all your pre-canned arguments against imperialism. That is intellectual laziness. I hope you step back and understand the root failure mode of your intellectual weaknesses here and why you resort to accusing others of what you see in the mirror.

But of course you aren't reading this as you are "done reading." Unless of course, you are a liar. Only you know, deep inside, but I think I know the answer. And the fact you have to quietly live with that, or else betray your own statement, is quite amusing thought for me to end this conversation on, so I truly appreciate the entertainment you've given from your last response.

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