Migration to America started during the Colonial Era with the pilgrims searching for religious freedom or economic opportunities. Started in 2010, the UN recorded the migration rates throughout the different continents and they estimated that in 2019, the number of migrants to North America were 59 Million.Then in October 2013, the Missing Migrant Project was also created to track the numbers of reported migrants found deceased or claimed as missing during migration. This project obtained their data through official records for their deceased numbers and based off their missing reports through interviews with other Migrants involved. This project was to bring awareness to the process of migration and its complications.

The Biggest Topic of 2019

When you log on to a social media platform such as Facebook, the most popular trending topic you see will be about ICE and detention centers or the Mexican border wall, etc. As this may be a sensitive topic, we need to dig deeper to understand how the process for immigration is being handled now compared to before. My parents are immigrants themselves. They came from Vietname during the Vietname war. It was different back then, being on huge boats, landing on Ellis Island and they process your papars right on dock so you an start working. Why is it such a big deal now? Well, once you see these reports, you will understand the difference.

The Data

Below is the reported migrants found deceased during migration from 2014 to 2018. 2019 was not included due to lack of reporting after March 2019. From the chart below, you can see the increase numbers of deceased migrants throughout the years, but look at the actual numbers itself. The numbers are increases yearly, but the numbers are all below 500 deaths per year.

Now look at the reported missing migrants and see that the report only shows the minimum numbers being reported on a yearly basis. These numbers were only obtained through accidents where migrants involved were able to be interviewed for official records.

Why Are The Numbers So Low?

The report disclosed that there were a lot of irregular migrations where migrants were taking unknown routes or being transported illegally. Deceased numbers are so low for a yearly report because the cause of deaths were undetermined or only skeletal remains were found. Even some areas they didn’t report their true numbers based off no known identification or documentation. Some were lost at sea or trafficked to unknown areas. There are so many logical explanations as to why out of millions of reported migration numbers are being shown by the UN only less than 500 people are reported as deceased. Even the missing numbers are way below what I expected and this is something that we should be looking at. They believe that its an abused system, not surprised, and people are just ignoring these drastically low numbers. Then it goes into everything just being a big mystery just like every other system out there. Maybe I’m looking at the low numbers all wrong and it may be a good thing that the numbers aren’t so high that its worrisome, but lets be real here. What’s the real reason the numbers reported for an entire year, as low as it is?

SOURCES:

_{^{https://www.kaggle.com/snocco/missing-migrants-project}}

_{^{https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/international-migrant-stock-2019.html}}

_{^{https://missingmigrants.iom.int/methodology}}