I want to give some input from the other side here.
I was born in Pakistan. I got out of there at age 12. It took my family about 8 years to get all the paperwork in order to leave the place.
I vividly remember, when I was about 8, a lady coming to our house to sell some pomegranates. It's what a lot of poor people do there to get by, kind of like this: http://transworldexpedition.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/D.... They'd knock the door of each house and try to make a sale. My mom often bought their stuff, and would sometime offer them some work for a small pay (wash the dishes, 20 rupees; mop the floor, 10 rupees). One of the ladies that my mom used to do business with frequently came to our house one day, just begging and begging to borrow (I think) some 12,000 rupees (about $100 USD). Why did she need that money? Her husband had found an opportunity to get out of the country... she spoke very happily about this as if it was finally a blessing she'd been praying for. She said her husband would go there to make money, and send it back so she could more comfortably take care of her 5 kids. This was while my family was in the process of getting the papers in order to flee Pakistan for America, we'd been working with 2 lawyers, we knew how to play the game and we had the money to play it. I remember thinking then in my naivete, wow, so poor people also have the opportunity to leave that hellhole for a better life.
Of course now I'm here in America, and I never heard of her again. But I can make a good guess what happened. Her husband probably saved up to go to Qatar (or some other middle-eastern region where this happens), paid for the ticket himself, had his passport confiscated when he got there and was basically trapped. It sends a chill down my spine to think how the lady fared in her life, without a husband, without the small income stream that she once had, with no word back from him -- only uncertainty. I knew where she lived, her place of residence, it kind of like this: http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article391293.ece/ALTERNATES..., with basically nothing inside besides a wooden frame for sleeping and little possessions beside stuff picked up from trash.
What separated her or her children from me, was that I was born a good kilometer north of where she lived, where the slums were. I was born to a father with a masters in chemical engineering, who had the means, resources, and the knowledge to know he had to get out of there if he wanted a better life for himself or his children.
I'm left now with the depressing, heavy, and intimate knowledge that there are still so many people there -- and elsewhere in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal etc. that are recipients of this cruel fate. Their sons and daughters are sold off as slaves and/or prostitutes, and they can't even do anything about it. The misery those people suffer is simply unimaginable to us.
Right on. Things are bad for people in much of the world, not just South Asia. A Nepali girl who is a friend of a friend of ours is basically homeless, penniless and stranded after a romantic overseas trip ended up with her being mistreated by her boyfriend. She is staying with us for the next week until a flight home. In the same week, a young boy we know's father was attacked by thieves with knives who slit his throat and hands to make off with minor cash. He was so deeply psychologically shocked that he has turned so far on to hard drugs he is completely ignoring his own family. After seeing the financial and emotional stress caring for the boy is placing on other people I promised to go and try to discuss him out of it: that's crisis #2 to solve this afternoon! The developing world sure is amazing, but poverty and pain can be hard to escape.
I was born in Pakistan. I got out of there at age 12. It took my family about 8 years to get all the paperwork in order to leave the place.
I vividly remember, when I was about 8, a lady coming to our house to sell some pomegranates. It's what a lot of poor people do there to get by, kind of like this: http://transworldexpedition.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/D.... They'd knock the door of each house and try to make a sale. My mom often bought their stuff, and would sometime offer them some work for a small pay (wash the dishes, 20 rupees; mop the floor, 10 rupees). One of the ladies that my mom used to do business with frequently came to our house one day, just begging and begging to borrow (I think) some 12,000 rupees (about $100 USD). Why did she need that money? Her husband had found an opportunity to get out of the country... she spoke very happily about this as if it was finally a blessing she'd been praying for. She said her husband would go there to make money, and send it back so she could more comfortably take care of her 5 kids. This was while my family was in the process of getting the papers in order to flee Pakistan for America, we'd been working with 2 lawyers, we knew how to play the game and we had the money to play it. I remember thinking then in my naivete, wow, so poor people also have the opportunity to leave that hellhole for a better life.
Of course now I'm here in America, and I never heard of her again. But I can make a good guess what happened. Her husband probably saved up to go to Qatar (or some other middle-eastern region where this happens), paid for the ticket himself, had his passport confiscated when he got there and was basically trapped. It sends a chill down my spine to think how the lady fared in her life, without a husband, without the small income stream that she once had, with no word back from him -- only uncertainty. I knew where she lived, her place of residence, it kind of like this: http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article391293.ece/ALTERNATES..., with basically nothing inside besides a wooden frame for sleeping and little possessions beside stuff picked up from trash.
What separated her or her children from me, was that I was born a good kilometer north of where she lived, where the slums were. I was born to a father with a masters in chemical engineering, who had the means, resources, and the knowledge to know he had to get out of there if he wanted a better life for himself or his children.
I'm left now with the depressing, heavy, and intimate knowledge that there are still so many people there -- and elsewhere in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal etc. that are recipients of this cruel fate. Their sons and daughters are sold off as slaves and/or prostitutes, and they can't even do anything about it. The misery those people suffer is simply unimaginable to us.