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A Venezuelan grandmother and her grandson eat a meal at a community kitchen in Ccuta, Colombia, April 2019. UNHCR/Vincent Tremeau

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, andIOM, the International Organization for Migration will today launch a US$1.35 billion regional plan to respond to the increasing humanitarian needs of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean and the communities hosting them.

As of early November 2019, there were approximately 4.6 million refugees and migrants from Venezuela around the world. Nearly 80 per cent are in Latin American and Caribbean countries - with no prospect for return in the short to medium term. If current trends continue, 6.5 million Venezuelans could be outside the country by the end of 2020.

The 2020 Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan (RMRP) being launched in the Colombian capital, Bogot, is a coordination and a fundraising tool established and implemented by 137 organizations. These are working across the region, aiming to reach almost four million people - including Venezuelan refugees and migrants and host communities - in 17 countries.

The 2020 RMRP is the result of a wide-ranging field-driven consultation process involving host governments, civil society and faith-based organizations, local communities and donors, as well as refugees and migrants themselves.

The plan includes actions in nine key sectors: health; education; food security; integration; protection; nutrition; shelter; relief items and humanitarian transport; and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). In addition to the emergency response, the 2020 RMRP puts a strong focus on ensuring the social and economic inclusion of refugees and migrants.

Only through a coordinated and harmonized approach will it be possible to effectively address the large-scale needs, which continue to increase and evolve as the current crisis deepens, said Eduardo Stein, Joint UNHCR-IOM Special Representative for Venezuelan refugees and migrants. To this end, the RMRP appeal for 2020 is one of the key instruments to mobilize resource for more collective and concerted action.

Despite many efforts and other initiatives, the dimension of the problem is greater than the current response capacity, so it is necessary that the international community doubles these efforts and contributions to help the countries and international organizations responding to the crisis, Stein said. More support to governments is needed, with a focus on development concerns in addition to immediate humanitarian needs.

The RMRP 2020 is the product of the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform, the coordination mechanism for the response to the Venezuelan refugee and migrant crisis, is co-led by UNHCR and IOM and involving a wide range of UN, NGO and civil society organizations.

The RMRP 2020 plan will be available at 16:00 Bogot time (22:00 CET) at the R4V.info portal.

For more information contact:

In Geneva:

In Buenos Aires:

In Colombia:

For background information please consult the Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Platform website.

See more here:
US$1.35 billion needed to help Venezuelan refugees and migrants and host countries - UNHCR

Few issues dominate our politics today more passionately than immigration, but we rarely see the crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border dramatized in fiction. Now Texas author and border native Oscar Csares has written what one critic calls a quietly suspenseful novel titled Where We Come From.

Csares' story about a woman who shelters undocumented immigrants shows us desperate migrants but also the border inhabitants they first encounter before arriving in places like South Florida. Csares will present his novel this weekend at the Miami Book Fair; he spoke with WLRNs Tim Padgett from the studios of public radio station KUT in Austin, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Texas.

Excerpts from their conversation:

WLRN: Shortly after Where We Come From was published this year, Americans were shocked by the drowning deaths of a Salvadoran migrant and his infant daughter in the Rio Grande. When you wrote the novel, were you anticipating a need to humanize the immigration crisis?

CASARES: You know, I wrote kind of far out from the immediate crisis that were in the midst of. I had started writing probably in 2014. But the closer we got to publication, the more we realized that somehow this was going to feel like it was right from the headlines.

READ MORE: New Report Claims 'Needless, Ongoing Trauma' from Trump's Family Separation Policy

Your novels hero is Nina, a weary but gutsy Mexican-American woman in Brownsville, Texas. She decides to allow a house in her backyard to be used as a sort of underground railroad for undocumented immigrants. She also gets involved with some pretty criminal characters who treat these immigrants like animals. Why was it important to tell the story through her eyes?

This was not some big plan of hers. She kind of stumbled into it. She did a favor for her maid, thinking it's a one-time deal. But the [migrant] traffickers see the little house and think this might be a great place to come back to. And then she finds herself entangled in this mess.

She's not opposed to immigration. She's not advocating for it. This is a person who didn't want to get involved, who had her own life, her own troubles already. But as it falls, literally, on her doorstep, she can't turn away anymore. And I think that issue of having to confront it and not be able to shy away from it was important for me.

We also see this border world through Nina's 12-year-old godson, Orly. How similar or how different is Orly from you and your own experience growing up on the border in Brownsville?

You know, my kids are here in Austin growing up 350 miles away from there. I talk about the border all the time to them. They know that that is some part of their ancestral homeland.

And just to reiterate, your family is Mexican-American.

Yes. And how do [those kids, like Orly,] make it back culturally? How do they stay connected to that?

MORE THAN A MIGRANT

The last and most important migrant Nina secretly shelters is Daniel, a boy who's escaping narco-violence in Mexico. You write that for Nina, Daniel is more than her mojadito out back, or more than just that slur for undocumented migrants, "wetback."

As the immigration crisis falls, literally, on her doorstep, she can't turn away anymore. And I think that issue of having to confront it and not be able to shy away from it was important for me. Oscar Casares

Thats right she gets to know his yearnings, his dreams, his fears. He becomes something much more meaningful to her.

And yet Nina warns Orly not to get too emotionally involved with Daniel. I was wondering if you could read that passage for us.

Yeah, I'd be happy to:

And you, why do you care so much if a stranger is alone, a boy you never met, from somewhere you will never go? she says. Thats not for you to worry about. You can feel sorry for him, but his problems are not your problems.

I thought To Beto was going to find a way to get inside. He was looking in all the windows.

You let me worry about him.

But its just weird, someone locked up and eating alone.

She pulls out a chair and sits close enough to touch him.

Dont be saying weird this and weird that. You saw him one time and only a little bit until he left again. Who is he?

What do you mean?

He knows she wants an answer but he doesnt altogether understand the question.

What is he to you? Is he your brother? Is he your primo or your to? What is he to you that you care so much?

He looks shaken, like she might have slapped him without raising a hand. Nothing.

She leans back in her chair, tilts her head to make eye contact. She wants him to think about his answer.

Are you sure?

He looks at up her and nods.

Tell me again.

What?

What you just said, say it again. What he is to you.

Hes nothing to me.

Nothing, she says. Then you can keep a secret about nothing.

I also can't forget a vignette in your novel about an elderly Guatemalan woman who dies in the borders harsh terrain, holding a picture of the grandchildren she wanted to join in Missouri. Do you foresee more novelists tackling border and immigration dramas like, say, family separation?

I think it's one of those unavoidable topics that we're living with. My novel just happened to catch this as things were escalating. But I think the longer that we are witnesses to this, it is going to be played out quite a bit more in fiction and film, for that matter.

Oscar Csares will present his novel Where We Come From at the Miami Book Fair on Sunday at 3:30 pm at Building 8 of Miami-Dade Colleges downtown campus, 300 NE 2nd Ave.

Go here to see the original:
The Immigration Crisis Falls On Her Doorstep. 'Where We Come From' Explores What Happens Next. - WLRN

Distancing ourselves from cultures other than our own is classic American behavior. This is probably an effect of not being subjected to sustained violent conflict on our soil since the Civil War. Citizens have taken up arms against other citizens during that time, of course, and weve weathered attacks from enemies foreign and domestic.

But these are singular events whose collective impact has sharpened our sense of partisanship, widened our empathy gap, and heightened our fear of the other.

The Syrian documentary For Sama, making its television debut this week on PBS Frontline, strives to erase such perceptions of distance entirely. It may be one of the most difficult 95 minutes of television you may watch on TV, period.

Filmmaker Waad al-Kateab designed For Sama as a soul-baring testimonial for her firstborn daughter, as a message from a past that her child, now three-and-a- half years old and being raised in London, is not likely to remember in detail.

But al-Kateabs documentary records five years of her life there, focusing most heavily on the time period when Sama was an infant, and ensures that anyone who sees the film cannot easily defend any policy that would criminalize refugees.

One scene shows al-Kateab playing with her baby daughter as bombs boom nearby. Al-Kateab, her husband Hamza, and baby Sama live in the hospital where Hamza works as one of the few doctors left in the besieged city. When she hears warnings from the hallway to take cover downstairs more strikes are coming al-Kateab hands Sama to a trusted caretaker as she grabs her camera. And then another explosion fills the hallway with smoke.

The camera catches it all the chaos, the coughing, the darkness. For a few tense moments al-Kateab doesnt know where Sama has gone.

She is, thankfully, alright. In a hospital full of people who have been injured by these attacks, this is a blessing. I keep filming. It gives me a reason to be there. It makes the nightmares feel worthwhile, she says. When I hear Russian airplanes in the sky, it cuts through me. Yes, Im scared of dying. But what scares me the most is losing you.

Al-Kateab, who co-directs the film with Edward Watts, places us into the center of the Syrian city of Aleppo in the midst of its siege, particularly the worst of it in 2015 and 2016. But they Watts and al-Kateab do not show us trained fighters, military equipment or much in the way of footage from the front.

That is not how she and her neighbors experienced the cruel, barbaric effort of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his regime to hold on to power. What al-Kateab does is far more powerful and heartbreaking she films her life, and the lives of her neighbors, as the war rages all around them. They cook, they laugh; bombs drop on the streets, destroying buildings, and people die. It is a brilliantly edited home video catalog of hope and chaos.

Many of the dead are children, an obscenity For Sama does not gloss over or turn away from. There is the boy whose tiny body is destroyed by a bomb; his brothers weep at knowing that they called him inside when they first heard explosions, but were too late.

His mother claims him from the doctors, carrying him despite their pleas to bear him in her stead. Dont take him from me, she insists, walking down the street holding his body, which is wrapped in a thin blue covering held together at the boy's hands and feet. I wont forgive you if you do.

There is the mother insisting al-Kateab film her hysteria as she screams for her listless child to regain consciousness, trying to wake him with promises of milk. There is the little boy laid on the tile of the hospital hall, his hand nearly blown off of his body, his jaw slack and eyes unfocused. And there is the unconscious nine-months pregnant woman, upon which the doctors perform an emergency caesarian only to pull forth a child that does not squall or move at all. Not a quiver.

For Sama is a work of skillfully edited raw video footage, although some elements have a cinematic glaze to them. The final frame in particular, which shows al-Kateab walking down a bombed-out street, baby slung across her and video camera in hand, employs a cinematic sweep the rest of the production eschews. But its naturalistic tone succeeds in conveying al-Kateabs thoughtful, insistent message that simple acts living are their own defiant acts, along with a warning that no matter where a person lives, what is normal and what constitutes everyday life can change in a very short timeframe.

Near the beginning of the film she visits a family whose mother is preparing what looks like a delicious stew. Fast forward a few frames to a later visit, and that same woman shows the filmmaker the last of her food, a pot of insect-infested rice. When her husband brings her one piece of unripened fruit, she celebrates as if he had handed her an extravagant gift.

Al-Kateabs camera bears witness to all of these atrocities at the hospital where she meets the man who eventually becomes her husband, Hamza. They fall in love and marry. They become pregnant. For a short time they make a home together, until the conflict intensifies so much that they must live at the hospital where Hamza works. Life, the kind we take for granted, goes on even as instant death proves to be an ever more frequent and likely threat.

And this precious view of even moments of normal imbue al-Kateabs narration For Sama with an aching urgency. She never raises her voice, never wavers. At worst, she allows herself the momentary luxury of bitterness in one deeply anxious scene: With regime forces a street away, Hamza tells his wife to abandon Sama, reasoning that she has a better chance of surviving if the Russians dont know they are her parents.

At this point, their time in Aleppo is at an end, but Hamza has been defying the regimes efforts to suppress information about the conflict from getting out to the rest of the world by doing interviews.

Your only crime is that your Mums a journalist and your Dads a doctor, al-Kateab says to a future version of Sama, one she hopes will understand what she says next. Now I wish I had never given birth to you.

A main reason that immigration has been more easily politicized than humanized in America is the proliferated illusion that people crossing our borders illegally with their children know what theyre getting into, and are somehow doing so for nefarious reasons. On the news were often shown the end result of the migrant crisis desperate people being arrested and detained by border officials, or washing up dead on the American riverbanks along our Southern border.

What we dont often see up close and in detail are the conditions that force them to leave behind the lives they knew. And this is the sheer power, dignity and tragedy in For Sama.

Within its very collapsed span of time, the film makes shockingly simple to see how much al-Kateabs family fits the image of the American ideal. Waad and Hamza are both middle class, educated professionals who stay in Aleppo because they are among the few witnesses and doctors the city has left.

Not only to do they lose everything, they hunted by their own government and the Russian forces aiding them. And yet, when al-Kateab turns her camera on Hamza as their leaving Our future is no longer in our hands, she tells her Sama he can only list what he and his medical team were able to accomplish in their final 20 days. Together, they conducted 890 operations and tended to 6,000 injured.

At the beginning of For Sama al-Kateab stresses her reasons for creating the film is to record the place she loved, the country from which he was exiled, as a means of explaining why she and her father fought. But the film also stands for the humanity of all exiles, all refugees, by positing that we all share some version of the same human story. As the filmmaker tells her daughter in her spare, simple voiceover narration, when she first left home to attend university in Aleppo, her parents warned her to be careful, calling her headstrong.

I never understood what they meant, al-Kateab says, until I had a daughter. You.

Frontline: For Sama makes its broadcast television premiere Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on PBS member stations. It is also available to stream on PBS, on PBS.org/frontline, on the PBS Video App, and on YouTube.

Here is the original post:
Frontline's For Sama does its part to close the immigration empathy gap - Salon

Tens of thousands of people migrate from Eastern Africa to Yemen each year even though the country has been devastated by a civil war, and smugglers frequently blackmail and torture migrants. Most migrants are hoping to make it to Saudi Arabia, and find work there. Lets take a closer look at this highly dangerous migrant route.

First stop:Djibouti

The smallcountry of Djibouti, located across from Yemen, is often a first stop for migrants. Only the Bab al-MandabStrait, which is roughly 30 kilometers wide at its narrowest point, separatesthe two countries. Thats why Djibouti is a transit country for many migrantstrying to make it to Saudi Arabia through Yemen. Many migrants hail fromDjibouti's neighboring countries, Ethiopia and Somalia. These three Ethopiangirls were photographed after they entered Dikhil, Djibouti.

13 years old, all bythemselves

The journey through Yemen from the Horn of Africa to Saudi Arabia is one of the fastest growing migrant routes worldwide -- even though there is a civil war raging in Yemen, and the UN has repeatedly called the situation in Yemen "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world."The migrants' dream: Escaping poverty by finding work in Saudi Arabia.Many of the migrants who leave countries such as Ethiopia and Somalia areextremely young. Like this boy, who is covering his eyes to protect them from asandstorm, after crossing into Djibouti from Ethiopia. He is only 13 years old.

Crossing the ocean insmall boats

To make it from Eastern Africa into Yemen, migrants have tocross the ocean. They are often sent out in small, crowded boats that areill-equipped for the journey by traffickers. In January of this year, at least52 people died off the shore of Djibouti, according to IOM. The migrants in thepicture made it to the shores of Yemen. They arrived on the shores of Rasal-Ara in the Lahj region in late July of this year.

Robbed of their freedom

After enduring hours crammed on a wooden smuggling boats, migrants are often loaded into trucks by traffickers and driven to compounds in the desert.Nearly every migrant who lands in the coastal village of Ras al-Ara -- amigranthotspot in Yemen -- is robbed of their freedom by traffickers, unableto continue their journey.

Imprisoned, families blackmailed

The migrants are imprisoned in hidden compounds, called hush, while their families are blackmailed into paying for their release. Yemeni authorities do little to stop these criminal activities, according to reports by AP.Most migrants aresubjected to daily torments -- beatings, torture, starvation,... -- while many women and girls are raped by their captors.

Horrifying torture

This 17-year-old Ethopian migrant was tortured so brutally that he lost his leg. AfterAbdul-Rahman landed in Ras al-Ara, traffickers locked him up and asked for phone numbers of people who could transfer money for their release. He told his captors he didn't have a number, because he knew that couldn't ask his father for more money. He was beaten and left without food or water for days, weeks even. One night, one of the captors beat his leg to a pulp with a steel rod. Then, he was dumped in the desert. A passing driver brought him to a hospital, where his leg was amputated.

A rare case of mercy

This couple was imprisoned in a hosh, but their smugglerslet them go because of their children. Fatma and her husband Yacoub areoriginally from Mali. They came to Yemen by boat from Djibouti. They want to goto Saudi Arabia, but making it there will be difficult, if not impossible, forthem especially because they have two young children. To make it from Yemen to its northern neighbor, they have to cross through mountains and deserts, through places where sandstorms are frequent and temperatures can reach 40 degrees Celsius and higher.

A war-torn country

The UN has called the situation in Yemen, where a civil war has been raging for four years,"the worst humanitarian crisis in the world." Tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured. Over 3 million people have been displaced. More than20 million people in Yemen are food insecure, including nearly 10 million who are suffering from extreme levels of hunger,an UN report released earlier this year revealed.

Destroyed stadium becomes refugee shelter

The northeastern coastal city of Aden is a transit point for many migrants.The"22nd May Soccer Stadium" in the city, which was partially destroyed by the war, became atemporary refuge for thousands of migrants this summer. One of them is this14-year oldEthiopian migrant, who was physically abused on his journey crossing intoYemen. He is resting on a makeshift bed in the stadium.At first, security forces housed migrants they captured in raids at the stadium. Soon, other migrants showed upvoluntarily, hoping for shelter. Then, the International Organization for Migration started distributing food there and arranging voluntary repatriations.

Extremely close to the frontline

Many migrants in Yemen who want to reach Saudi Arabia travel through Dhale province, located tens of kilometers inland from the southern coast. Staying and travelling through there is extremely dangerous. These migrants took shelterin a smallshack at a Qat market. Thefrontlinebetween militiamen backed by the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels only afew hundred meters away.

With material/text from picture-alliance, AP

See the original post here:
Eastern Africa to Yemen: One of the most dangerous migrant routes - InfoMigrants

One Russian-speaking family arrivedat a migrant shelter in Phoenix carrying Louis Vuitton luggage. Theyhad toted the designerbagsacross the U.S.-Mexico border after travelinghalfway around the globeto ask forasylum in the United States

Another large migrant family from India asked if there was a vegetarian restaurant nearby after being dropped off by federal immigration authorities at the same shelter. They then ordered 15 meatless burgers and sodas to go.

OneRussian-speaking family persuaded a volunteer to sell them their van so they could drive themselves across the country to Philadelphia rather than take a Greyhound bus.

Still another Russian-speaking family carriedenough U.S. cash to buy four plane tickets totaling $1,300 tofly to the East Coast.

These are examples of some of the non-Spanish speakingmigrant families federal immigration authorities have been dropping off lately at local churches after the families arrived at the southern border without documents and asked for asylum to remainin the U.S.

Some of the non-Spanish speakingarrivals have raised eyebrows amonglocal pastors whose churches have been assisting migrant families released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Not only are the non-Spanish speaking families from countries far from the United States, they carry their own cash and credit cards and appearmuch better educated than the mostly poor Central American families that federal immigration authorities had been dropping off earlier this year.

The sudden arrival of affluent migrant families from outside Latin America even prompted onelocal pastor to close the church's doors to any more families.

"There are different people coming and the main reason we stopped is because they don't seem to need our help," said Angel Campos, head pastor atIglesia Monte Vista,a Hispanic church on the east side of Phoenix.

The church had provided assistance to more than 5,000 people until it stopped, Campos estimated.

Previously, most came from Central America, principally Guatemala but also El Salvador and Honduras, three countries known as the Northern Triangle,plagued byhigh rates of poverty, corruption and violence.

Volunteer members help asylum seekers Sandra Estefania Lema Guaraca, 20, from Ecuador (left), her 3-year-old son Derick Joshua Morocho Lema and Brenda Carolina Rosales, 28, from Guatemala after they were released by ICE at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa, Arizona.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

The Central American families were content to sleep on floorswaiting for relativesalready in the U.S. to scrape together enough money to buy them bus tickets or plane fares. Many had little more than a sixth grade education, Campos said.

Because they often carried little or no moneyof their own, the Spanish-speaking families often relied on volunteers at the churches to provide them with food, used clothing and basic necessities like toothbrushes and diapers, he said.

In contrast, the non-Spanish-speaking families coming from India, the former Soviet Union and other countries typically hop on planes within a few hours of being dropped off at the shelters byICE authorities.

"We love the immigrants. I dont care if they are from Central America or from China," Campos said.

"Butthe point is we dont see the need for us to (remain)open. ... Some people were even trying to buy a car, or they can take an Uber to whatever place they want," Campos said. "... So that made us see that our participation in helping the people was not so necessary because It was not a crisis anymore."

Local pastors from Hispanic churches who have been helping migrant families since October 2018 say ICE continues to drop off families.

But the numbers have slowed to a trickle after President Donald Trump's administration effectively shut down the wave of families migrating to the U.S. from Central America.

The relatively few families ICE isreleasing are from regions in Mexico plaguedbydrug cartel violence, or fromcountries inother parts of Latin America struggling with political and economic turmoil, notablyBrazil, Cuba, and Venezuela.

ICE has been increasingly releasingnon-Spanish speaking migrant families from faraway countries, most notably from India, China and the former Soviet Union. Theywere released after arrivingat the border without documents after traveling from the opposite side of the globe, possibly with the help of international smuggling rings.

In October, Mexico deported 311 migrants from India back to their country after they were caught in Mexico without documents. The Indian migrants had paid smugglers about $41,000 each to reach the U.S., The Times of India reported.

Volunteer members help asylum seekers Zhu Yanying, 41, and her son Ling Jie Zoel, 17, from China. They were released by ICE at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa, Arizona.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

The sudden arrival of non-Spanish speaking families reflects a big spike in migrant families overall.

The Trump administration has focused almost all of its attention on addressing the huge wave of migrant families coming to the U.S. from Central America, so little attention has been paid to the rise in non-Spanish-speaking migrant families fromcontinents on the other side of the globe.

Border Patrol apprehensions of migrant "family units" hit 473,682 in fiscal year 2019, up 342% from the 107,212 the previous year.

Migrant families from the Northern Triangle and Mexico made up 92% of the total.

The remaining 37,132 from countries outside the Northern Triangle or Mexico was 25 times larger than the1,442family unitapprehensions fromother countries the previous year, the data shows.

The Border Patrol does not publish data on migrant family apprehensions by citizenship. That makes itdifficult to tell how many of those are from other countries in Latin America and how many come from other continents, which the Border Patrol refers to as "extra-continentals."

In the past, most "extra-continentals" apprehended by the Border Patrol wereyoung adult men.Now more "extra-continental" migrants are arriving as families, based on overall Border Patrol data and anecdotal evidence.

Asylum seekers from Brazil Adriano Moraes da Silva, 43, and his wife Claudineia Ferreira Rodrigues Moraes, 40, talk about their journey after they were released by ICE at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa, Arizona.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

Since July 27, when a vacant elementary school in Phoenix converted into a shelter for migrant families opened, ICE has dropped off 201 families, according to data provided by the International Rescue Committee, which runs the shelter, along with other organizations.

Of the 201, 125families were from Mexico, and 42 came from countries inthe Northern Triangle. An additional 16families were from other parts of Latin America. Eighteen camefrom countries outside of Latin America, including 12 families from India, 3 from Romania, two from Kyrgyzstan and one from Azerbaijan.

"Weve seen families from around the world," saidStanford Prescott, a spokesman for the International Rescue Committee inArizona.

In trying to stop the wave, theTrump administration has accusedmigrant families ofexploiting "loopholes" in the immigration system to get into the U.S. to seek better economic opportunities not to flee persecution.

Under legal rulings and immigration laws, adults who arrive at the border with children are typically released from custody within 20days, which Trump says acts as a draw for more families to come illegally and then ask for asylum.

Migrant families are allowed to remain in the U.S. while their asylum claims are pending, a process that can take years because of growing court backlogs, as opposed to single adults who typically are held in detention centers until their asylum cases are decided or they are deported.

It's difficult to say whether the migrant families arriving from other countries are trying to exploit the U.S. immigration system or are truly fleeing persecution.

Sikh family Parmijit Kaur (left), husband Surjit Singh and their 12 year-old-son Sukhvir Singh arrive at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

Experts point out that refugees and asylum-seekers are often portrayed as destitute and impoverished, a misconception that likely wasreinforced by the wave of mostly poor Central American familieswho poured across the border earlier this year in unprecedented numbers and received so much media attention.

In reality, people forced to leave their home countries due to persecution come from all walks of life, economic backgrounds and education levels, experts say.

The sudden arrival of families from India, for example,could reflect rising persecution against religious minorities, including Sikhs, Muslims and Christians,in that country under the government of Prime MinisterNarendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist.

"Indians have beenseeking asylum for years now," though in the past most were adult men, not families, said Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

"Many of them are religious minorities, Sikhs in particular," Capps said. "They are fleeing religious persecution in many cases so their motiveon the surface doesnt appear to be economic the way it appears partially for many of the poorer people coming from Mexico and Central America."

Sukhvir Singh, age 12 and part of a Sikh family from India, arrives with his parents at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

The arrival of Chinese and Russian speaking families asking for asylum also isnot surprising, said Daniel Balson, advocacy director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International USA.

"There is any number of reasonsfor why individuals from across Eastern Europe and Asia would be interested in the United States," Balson said. "Obviously, the government of the Russian Federation is remarkably repressive. This is especially true if you are active politically, or are actively speaking out against the policies of the (Vladimir) Putin government."

Harder to explain is thegrowing numbers of non-Spanish speaking families at the U.S.-Mexicoborder. Non-Spanish speaking migrants in the past almost always tended to be young adult men.

Balsonbelieves the Trump administration's immigration policies are driving more non-Spanish speaking migrants, including families, to seek asylum at the southern border, either by crossing illegally or at ports of entry, rather than flying directly to the U.S. with visas.

"The Trump administration hasshut down virtually all of the common paths for individuals fleeing persecution who are interested in seeking asylum," Balson said. "This is really true around the world. What this has resulted in is individuals who are fleeing persecution who have credible claims for asylum are looking for other alternative paths to make those claims. And the southern route is an immigration route that is common."

Balsoncited examples such as the Trump administration'sslashing of refugee admissionsinto the U.S. and the so-called Muslim ban, which under a version upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018 blocks travel to the U.S. from six predominantly Muslim countries as well asNorth Koreans and certain Venezuelan government officials.

Some of the migrant families arriving from other continentscould be paying smuggling organizations to reach the U.S., he said.

"What we have seen in Europe is what we have seen in the United States,"Balson said, "that shutting down safe, effective ways to secure asylum functions as a subsidy for militiamen, human-traffickers, war lords of all different shapes and stripes."

Balson pointed out that migrant families from other continents who chooseto travel through Mexicofacethe same deadly risks as those from Spanish-speaking countries.

Volunteer members help Adriano Moraes da Silva, 43, and his daughter Rikelly Stephany Rodrigues Moraes, 16, get food and clothing after the asylum seekers from Brazil were released by ICE at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa, Arizona.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

On June 12, the body of a 7-year-old girl from India was found in a remote desert area inthe Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona where hundreds of migrants have perished in recent years.

The girl had crossed the border illegally with a group of migrants from India, the Border Patrol said.

The Indian girl died less than two weeks before the bodies of a father from El Salvador and his 23-month-old daughter were found on the banks of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico. The pair drowned trying to reach Brownsville, Texas by wading across the river into the U.S.

On Nov. 14, a Border Patrol agent shot and wounded amigrant from Russia suspected of trying to cross the border illegally near Lukeville in the southwestern corner of Arizona The agent fired his weapon while trying to arrest the migrant and an altercation ensued, the Border Patrol said. It was not clear if the Russian migrant was traveling alone or with a family.

"The bottom line is that nobody wants to leave their home to travel to a foreign land where they dont speak the language, trek across dangerous terrain only to face hostile border guards," Balson said. "When people do this, especially with their families, with their children, it simply is reflective of the fact that their conditions at home have become so unstable, so dangerous so terrifying that this perilous journey is the only possible alternative that they can envision."

Asylum seekers Claudineia Ferreira Rodrigues Moraes, 40, and her husband Adriano moraes da Silva, 43, from Brazil (left) and Sandra Estefania Lema Guaraca, 20, with her 3-year-old son Derick from Ecuador, prays with Co-pastor Hector Ramirez after they were released by ICE at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa, Arizona.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

The risein migrant families from other continents arriving at local shelters may show that while the Trump administration has effectively closed the door on migrant families from Central America, it remains open for others, saidCapps at the Migration Policy Institute.

"Over time, people from all over the world are learning that the U.S. system has a hole in it when it comes to families seeking asylum," Capps said.

The Trump administration has essentially "plugged"that holefor Central Americans through policies thatnow requireCentral Americans to wait in Mexico for asylum hearings in the U.S.

The U.S. has pressuredMexico to stop Central American migrantsfrom reaching the U.S.

Additionally, the U.S. has recentlysigned agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that require asylum-seekers who pass through to apply in thosecountries first.

"But it hasnt been plugged for the extra-continentals, for the non-Spanish speakers," Cappssaid.

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On Tuesday, Oct. 29, immigration authorities dropped off four families at Iglesia Cristiana Buen Pastor, a small Hispanic church in Mesa.

Three of the families were not out of the ordinary. They includeda mother and her 2-year-oldson from Chiapas, Mexico, a couple and their 6-year-old daughter from Morelos, Mexico,and a couple and their 4-year-old sonfrom Brazil.

But the fourth family, a mother and her 17-year-old sonstood out. They camefrom China, and spoke only a few words of English.

Zhu Yanying, the 41-year-old mother, her hair cut short, wore ana orangepuffy jacket. She had a GPS monitoring device placed on one ankle by immigration authorities before her release to track her whereabouts.

She told a Chinese-speaking reporter that she and her son, Zou Ling Jie, were fleeing religious persecution in Fujian, a provincein China.

She said she decided to bring her son to the U.S. to ask for asylum after she was jailed for 14 days by the policebecause of her religious views.

Volunteer members help asylum seekers Zhu Yanying, 41, and her son Zou Ling Jie, 17, from China. They were released by ICE at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa, Arizona. Co-pastor Cecilia Ramirez, arranged for food, shelter and their final destination.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

She said she and her son had plane tickets for a 3:30 p.m. flight from Phoenix toNew York City, where a relative lives. The tickets were bought for them by relatives in New York.

After eating breakfast at tables volunteers had set up for the families outside in a patio, Yanying and her son went into the church kitchen to figure out how they were going to get to the airport.

To communicate, volunteers spoke into their phones in English and Spanish, using an app to translate their words into Chinese, and then back again into English or Spanish.

"Sarah, one of our volunteers, is going to take you to the airport at 1:30 because you need to be at the airport two hours before your flight," Renata Garza Irving, one of the church volunteers, told them through the phone app.

Two weeks earlier, immigration authorities released a family from India at the same church:Surjit Singh, 39, his wife, Parmit Kaur, 35, and their 11-year-old son, Sukhvir.

Singh and his sonwore turbans on their heads, which identified them as Sikhs, a religious minorityin India.

Singh told a Punjabi-speaking reporter that hisfamilycamefrom Punjab, where the majority of the population are Sikhs.

Sukhvir Singh, age 12 and part of a Sikh family from India, arrives with his parents at Iglesia Cristiana El Buen Pastor Church in Mesa.(Photo: Nick Oza/The Republic)

He said it took the familytwo months to reach the U.S. They first flew from India to Dubai, then to Paris and then to Ecuador. From Ecuador, Singh said the familyflew to Cancun, a resort city in southern Mexico, and then traveled by bus to the southern border of the U.S.

Singh said the family was on their way to the Los Angeles area, where Singh said a nephewlived. Southern California is home to one of the largestSikh Indian populations in the U.S.

When the reporter asked Singh how much the trip had cost them, he turned and walked away. Singhrefused to answer any more questions.

The Indian family did not stay at the church long. Theyatea vegetarian lunch served by volunteers,tookshowersand picked out a few items ofclothing from a room with racks full of donated items, then hopped in a cab to drive them from Phoenix to California.

Before the familyleft, Singh told one of the church volunteers, "Youare so generous, I will never forget your help."

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Arizona Republic reporter Alison Steinbach and photographer Nick Oza contributed to this article.

Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.

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Growing numbers of families crossing the border are coming from India and other continents - AZCentral