The night Vaishaliben Patel, her husband
Jagdish and their two children set out for the
US-Canadian border they dressed in new
heavy winter coats and snow boots.
Temperatures where they walked, in
Emerson, Manitoba, had dropped more than
35 degrees below freezing.
The young family had probably never
experienced temperatures that low before.
Even on its coldest day, the Patels' home
village in western India would not have
reached within 10 degrees of freezing.
As they walked - maybe for a couple of hours,
maybe for more - sharp winds carried snow
and shards of ice across the plains, reducing
visibility to nothing.
Canadian police found the four of them -
Vaishaliben, 37, Jagdish, 39, their daughter,
Vihangi, 11 and son, Dharmik, 3 - lying
together, frozen, in an empty field on 19
January. They had died 12 metres from the
US border.
The mysterious case of a young family that
made its way from an unassuming village in
Gujarat, India, to the bitter reaches of
Manitoba, half a world away, has shocked
Canadians and Indians alike, exposing the
intense pressures and economic anxieties
that may have led to tragedy.
Officials have said they believe the family's
deaths to be a case of human smuggling, and
authorities in the US and Canada are still
trying to determine how the Patels reached
Emerson and who may have led them there,
ultimately to their deaths.
The village of Dingucha in western India is
about as far as you can get - in distance and
in feeling - from icy Manitoba.
Some 12,000km away from Emerson, the
town is home to about 3,500 residents,
mostly middle-class agricultural workers and
labourers in the province of Gujarat.
There, the Patels lived in a neat two-storey
home with a rooftop balcony and a large
welcome sign painted over the door. Their
home sits snug among a line of row houses -
concrete buildings painted yellow, pink and
white.
Some residents apparently knew of the Patels'
plans to travel, telling the BBC's Gujarati
service that they went to Canada on visitor's
visas. Relatives grew concerned when
messages from the family stopped coming,
about a week after they had left, they said.
On or about 12 January, the Patel's arrived in
Canada on a flight to Toronto before traveling
2,000km (1,200 miles) west to Manitoba.
Police have not determined how they got to
Emerson - by land or sky - though there is no
record of them boarding a domestic flight.
The drive would have been long - 22 hours on
the Trans-Canada Highway.
They would have snaked along the Canada-US
border, weaving past the frozen lakes of
southern Ontario before reaching the flat
expanse of the prairies, where wind carries
snow through the air like smoke.
The town has one pharmacy, one grocery
store, one school. The houses are modest
single-storey homes with single-car garages
and large yards. Residents call it a retirement
town - a pleasant place to live, with not much
to do.
If the Patels had stayed at one of Emerson's
two borderside motels, they would have
looked straight out at the US - North Dakota to
the right, Minnesota to the left. From here, at
Manitoba's southern edge, it can be hard to
distinguish the white plane of frozen fields
from the snowy sky.
Standing outside in Emerson's winter is
almost unbearable, despite layers of fleece,
down and wool. The air burns the lungs with
every breath even when it is 15 degrees
warmer than the day the Patels attempted to
walk across the border.
The cold feels "like a dog biting your hand and
not letting go", said George Andrawess, who
runs Emerson's lone pharmacy, five minute's
walk from the border.
"Your tears will freeze in your eyes," he said.
Both Jagdish and Vaishaliben were educated,
local media said, at one point working as
teachers. Like many other Gujaratis, the
Patels had a second home nearby, in the
nearest middle-class town, Kalol. Residents
told the BBC's Gujarati service that Jagdish,
the father, had helped his brother in the
garment business.
Their parents were often nearby, also dividing
their time between Kalol and Dingucha.
Yet despite the appearances of a well-
anchored life in India, something compelled
the Patels to leave.
In Dingucha, this is common, residents told
the BBC.
"Every child here grows with the dream of
moving to a foreign country," a Dingucha
councilman said.
Many locals spoke of an intense and
pervasive social pressure to move abroad,
with social status determined by connections
in foreign countries. Those who stay are seen
as incapable of raising the funds to leave,
everyone else moves on, some said.
"There are instances, where boys of marriage
age cannot find a suitable girl, because they
don't have any close relatives in any foreign
country," one person said.
And there were perhaps idealised views of life
abroad. "There are many people earlier as well
who had gone to US without proper
documentation, and many of them are doing
well," said another.
"People think there are dollar trees here," said
Mitesh Trivedi, a Gujarati-Canadian. "I had that
in my mind when I came, I was 26 years old."
Mr Trivedi, now 59, settled in Canada three
decades ago on a marriage visa and became
a citizen in 2000. In many ways, his is the life
that Indian economic migrants aspire to
abroad: He owns a profitable restaurant, has
raised a family, and his two daughters both
hold graduate degrees in the medical field.
Though he was highly educated in India - Mr
Trivedi is an engineer by training - upward
mobility would have been limited there. "I was
born lower-middle class. If I had stayed, I
would have died lower-middle class," he said.
He and other expats in Winnipeg described
clandestine travel networks, plans whispered
between contacts in India, Canada and the US,
that facilitate these crossings, with relatives
or friends who were smuggled successfully
becoming "references" for particular
smugglers.
"It's word of mouth," Mr Trivedi said. "Nothing
on paper."
He has heard of people who have done it, he
said. Crossing on foot or hiding in trunks of
cars "is not new".
These networks can foster safe havens
abroad, with documented Indian migrants
providing a place to stay or off-the-books
employment for the newly arrived.
According to Canada's Immigration and
Refugee Board, the country is experiencing an
influx of irregular migration.
Most of these crossings are northbound - with
migrants trying to cross into Canada from the
US.
Last year, about 4,000 people were found
trying to enter Canada this way, compared to
900 crossing into the US, said Western
University's Professor Victoria Esses, who
studies immigration policy. Before Covid-19
travel restrictions, both numbers would likely
be higher, she said.
Emerson itself, with its wide stretch of
unguarded border, is considered a hotspot for
illegal crossings. US Border Patrol recently
named this area as a high incident spot for
human smuggling.
In 2017, two migrants from Ghana were badly
injured by frostbite, each losing several
fingers, when they tried to make the trek into
Canada from the US . At the time, Emerson
locals told the BBC they were afraid someone
would die trying to make it across.
It's unclear why Canada was not the Patels'
final destination, but Gujaratis in both India
and Canada say residents of Dingucha have a
particular fixation with the US.
Most of those who spoke to the BBC were
familiar with the US immigration process,
rattling off descriptions of different types of
visas and which lead to citizenship.
Or perhaps they simply had family there.
A few days after their deaths, an online
fundraiser for the family's funeral costs was
set up by Dilip Patel, a doctor in Chicago,
though it is uncertain if he was a relative. He
did not respond to requests for comment.
Police on both sides of the border have said
that the Patels' case is probably linked to
human smuggling.
The only named suspect so far is 47-year-old
Steve Shand, a US citizen from Florida,
arrested last month. Mr Shand is suspected of
playing a part in a "larger human smuggling
operation", connected to the deaths of the
Patels, the US Homeland Security department
has said.
On 19 January, the same day the Patels were
found, Mr Shand was arrested in Pembina,
North Dakota, less than 8km from Emerson.
He was driving a 15-seat van with two Indian
nationals as passengers, and cases of food
and water in his boot.
Five additional Indian nationals were found
that day, 400 metres south of the Canadian
border, walking towards the location of Mr
Shand's arrest. They told authorities they had
been walking for more than 11 hours.
The Indian nationals arrived illegally in the US,
authorities said. All seven spoke Gujarati - the
language of the Patels' home state - and all
seven wore newly purchased matching winter
clothing, similar to the Patels'. One man
carried a backpack that did not belong to him,
containing children's clothes, a nappy and
toys.
The group told authorities that a family of four
had been left behind.
One of the Indian nationals caught with Mr
Shand told authorities he paid a "significant"
amount of money to enter Canada under a
falsified student visa. After crossing into the
US on foot, he had expected to be driven to
his uncle's home in Chicago.
But for the Patels, the central questions are
left unanswered: what was waiting for them
across the plains, was it worth the risk, or did
they even know the risk they were taking?
Among the many painful details of the case,
Canadians have been left bewildered as to
why the Patels pushed forward, despite the
frigid and dangerous conditions.
"Who told them to do this?" asked Hemant
Shah, an Indian expat and community leader
in Winnipeg. "Any Gujarati or Indo-Canadian
would have told them not to go. It was minus
35, you cannot survive that."
Perhaps the journey seemed simple - a
straight shot across an invisible, unimpeded
border - but on the night of their crossing, that
path was blurred by snow, and the long
stretch of the prairies would have offered little
in the form of navigation.
They didn't even make it to the border. In
their final moments, they may not have known
where they were at all.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60290955
Lalasticlala Mynd44

Summary pls?

I really couldn't read that long and clustered write-up. It's sad they are dead, though.

Odetokun3:
Summary pls?

Dey wan Japa, but unfortunately gave in (died) to the harsh weather at the Canadian border.