This attitude is grating enough among spoiled teenagers. Even worse, this sense of entitlement permeates the pedestrian invasion forces ‐ euphemized as "migrant caravans" ‐ now marching up from Central America, through Mexico.
Undetermined thousands of illegal aliens, largely from Honduras and El Salvador, have broken into Guatemala and then broken into Mexico. They intend to break into America. Last month, news cameras caught them swamping the gate that separates Guatemala’s Ciudad Tecun Uman and Mexico’s Ciudad Hidalgo. They banged on the barrier, and down it came. A wave of humanity rushed forth, like floodwaters pouring through a ruptured levee on the mighty Mississippi.
Hondurans are poor, and their nation is no hotbed of hope. Most of these people seek to brighten their life prospects. But the path to greener pastures must be legal. These people all should stand down, retreat, and apply for visas at the embassies of the countries to which they wish to emigrate. No land ‐ not least the USA ‐ is obligated to accept these people. They have no right to live anywhere else without their destination nation’s permission.
A complex set of international customs and legal precedents holds that those in distress should seek relief in the "first country of asylum" safe enough for them to take refuge. International law does not recognize a right for those fleeing chaos or squalor to shop from one nation to the next, as if they were homebuyers who skin up their noses at houses A and B and demand house C.