RCMP on the Canada/US border where 4 people perished in the cold
We are regularly reminded of the perils of people on the move around the world, refugees and asylum seekers who go to great lengths and considerable risk to leave situations where they are under threat with the hope of a new life. Often we hear about them when they die, crossing the Mediterranean Sea, or more recently, the English Channel. Sometimes the people on the move are on the US border with Mexico but a few days ago the realities of dangerous migration came close to home when the bodies of four people, including a teen and an infant, were found almost precisely on the border between the States and Canada.
The temperature was intensely cold as a group of people, including these four, was dropped at a remote spot in Manitoba between the two countries. Some survived, although one person will probably have a hand amputated because of frostbite. Those who perished became separated from the rest and died of exposure. This happened in Canada, not in some distant place.
A US man has been arrested and charged for transporting these people and he is probably part of a larger human smuggling ring. In Omar El Akkad's novel What Strange Paradise one of the people-smugglers on the ill-fated ship says with contempt:
But the two kinds of people in the world areen't good and bad -- they're engines and fuel. Go ahead, change your country, change your name, change your accent, pull the skin right off your bones, but in their eyes they will always be the engines and you will always, always be the fuel.
This sort of cynicism and greed continues to drive some people to traffic other human beings, and many more will die. Many Christians have hardened their hearts to those who are migrants, ignoring the gospel and the reality that Jesus' own family were asylum seekers for a time.
We must grieve these Manitoba deaths as more than statistics. Somehow we must seek the way of compassion and hospitality so that these tragedies won't continue.
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