“Elsewhere in the country, illegal immigrants are hurriedly crossing the border in pursuit of that fabled ‘American Dream.’”
VALLEJO, California — Droves of tourists from west of the International Date Line are ostensibly anxious as they go through immigration on arrival either at the Los Angeles International Airport or the San Francisco International Airport in the nation’s most populous state.
Elsewhere in the country, where 333.3 million people live, more than 39 million of them living in California, illegal immigrants are hurriedly crossing the border in pursuit of that fabled “American Dream.”
This is defined as the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination and initiative.
Before long, some of the tourists from west of the IDL, many of whom are Filipinos, stay longer than their tourist visas allow them and hide from immigration authorities, earning for themselves the familiar Tagalog pejorative “tago nang tago (perennially in hiding).”
According to the new Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center estimates based on the 2022 American Community Survey, the most recent year available, the unauthorized immigrant population, topped by Mexicans, in the United States grew to 11 million in 2022.
The increase from 10.5 million in 2021 reversed a long-term downward trend from 2007 to 2019, which makes this the first sustained increase in the unauthorized immigrant population since the period from 2005 to 2007.
Official figures suggest California tops the list of 50 states in the United States with the highest number of unauthorized immigrants, with 1.9 million, followed by Texas (1.6 million) and Florida (900,000) — with the total including those who went to other states placed at 10.5 million.
Another face in this “American Dream” is the state of homelessness in this “land of milk and honey,” a poetic description of the land’s fertility and abundance, a phrase which originated in the bible when God promised Abraham a land “flowing with milk and honey.”
In 2023, the estimated number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States was 653,104, the highest number since 2007.
This was 12.1 percent increase from 2022, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which conducts an annual point-in-time count of homelessness on a single night each winter.
The count includes people in both sheltered and unsheltered locations.
Sources said the Black community experiences homelessness most disproportionately, at a rate nearly triple its population share.
Instance, from 2020 to 2022, the number of unhoused Black individuals dropped by 5 percent, although this jumped again in the past year, along with most other self-identified ethnic groups.
During a road trip from California to Colorado via Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, we saw shadows of heavily grimy homeless people walking on the streets or simply slouching on the sidewalks with either filthy backpacks or personal carts beside them.
We wondered where the homeless people spent the night — but particularly during the fall or autumn, the season before freezing winter.
According to our sources, homeless people, including the elderly, spend the night in various ways, most commonly by sleeping in shelters when available but also often outdoors in places like parks, under bridges, in tents, or even on sidewalks, depending on their circumstances and location.
In the United States, where lights sparkle in urban centers and capital cities, the primary federal agency responsible for managing homelessness initiatives and funding shelters for the homeless is the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The US Inter-agency Council on Homelessness coordinates the overall federal response to homeless across various agencies, including HUD, to develop a comprehensive strategy to end homelessness.
Can the homeless stay only overnight in the shelters, checking in only at 6 pm and moving out at 6 am the next day?
Sources said individuals may stay for up to 180 days, but the shelter facilities primary day-to-day focus is assisting program assistants with creating a housing plan, making connections to housing resources and moving them to transitional and permanent housing at the soonest possible time.
Disquieting nightmare in the “American Dream.”
