Thread: Illegal Immigration Pipeline From South Asia to US Passes th

Illegal Immigration Pipeline From South Asia to US Passes through Guatemala

By Julie López

Published May 17, 2011 | Fox News Latino

The shocking discovery Tuesday of 513 migrants --many of them from India and other Asian countries -- in two trucks in Chiapas, Mexico headed for the U.S. border, lays bare the growing importance of an illegal pipeline that funnels people from South Asia to the United States. Fox News Latino takes an exclusive look at this illegal immigration traffic.

Guatemala City --The house was in a residential section of Guatemala City, just an ordinary structure that blended into the landscape.

But what Guatemalan immigration authorities found inside in February was anything but ordinary: 27 males, including two minors, who had not eaten or bathed for days.

Even more intriguing, they were from India – nearly 10,000 miles, or a 17-hour plane ride, away.

These immigrants, who carried passports and return plane tickets, were among the 1,688 Indians who entered the country through Guatemalan immigration checkpoints at the airport or by land between January and April.

But most of them, like the immigrants found in the Guatemala City house, evidently had no intention of going back to India.

During that period, only 436, or 25 percent, left by the same means.

Increasingly, Indians seem to be using Guatemala – which doesn’t require a visa for Indian nationals – as a bridge to begin an illegal journey through Mexico, where a visa is required, to their final destination in the United States, said Enrique Degenhart, who took office in early 2010 as Guatemala’s director of immigration services.

“An abrupt increase in the number of Indian citizens entering Guatemala led us to ponder whether they were using this country as a bridge,â€

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