“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Laying on my bed in my apartment in Barranquilla, Colombia…

Shortened to Quilla.

It’s almost midnight and I am chilling to some music when I get a text message…

“Hey Matt, want to get some beer?”

It was a Colombian friend of mine named Andres who lived close to me at the time.

Often enough, we would go to little stores on the street that you can find in Quilla.

Where you can sit down at a small table on the outside with some beer and chill.

And there was this one store anyway we went to often – the owner was pretty cool.

So I say sure and walk out of my apartment a few minutes later to meet up at the little store we would often drink at.

Once there, I see Andres is talking with some locals and he introduces me to them.

Before then we proceed to sit down at a table with about 12 beers.

As we are drinking….

I see a random homeless guy stumbling around, yelling some random shit or whatever…

Sounded pretty intelligible.

The guy was black, maybe about my height more or less, bald and in dirty clothes.

Maybe with a missing tooth or a few – who knows.

And was clearly under the influence – drugs or whatever.

There’s some stone concrete anyway separating the little store from the road.

Where this guy is stumbling around with no care for any car that might pass by.

And he stumbles over to us and yells a bunch of shit.

Then he looks at me – quite clearly the foreigner – and goes…

“Hey…hey….money?? You have money for me?!?”

He persists a little bit in asking over and over again while I’m telling him to piss off.

Then the store owner yells out basically “go away or I’ll call the cops!”

Now, being Colombia, you can’t really expect the cops to show up quickly enough and do anything.

They’re often incompetent and plenty of times corrupt themselves in looking to steal money from you through a bribe.

But we lived in a neighborhood that supposedly was relatively nice in Barranquilla.

And there was a small little police station very close to where we were and I often saw them driving around and looking busy or whatever.

But I say relatively safe because it still looked kinda shitty in some parts and crime happened there as well.

Such as Andres getting robbed around this time by gun point at a small park very close by.

But it wasn’t the worst place ever either – just not as safe as you could hope despite being known for being relatively safe compared to other neighborhoods.

Anyway, the guy pisses off down the road mumbling some shit..

Maybe something like “damn gringos, they have all the money and they won’t share….fuck them…fuck them all!”

Or something.

Either way, Andres and I continue on drinking our beer and that is where he makes a certain comment…

“They’re criminals. They’re rapists. None are good people.”

“Fucking Venezuelans…” Andres started to go on about.

He shakes his head and drinks a little more of his beer before going on…

“There’s too many of those fuckers here….” He claims.

“Why you think that?” I ask.

“They’re everywhere. Not as bad here as in cities like Bogota but still…” He says.

And then he goes on….

“All of them bring crime, are poor as shit and harass everyone for money. They’re all fucking scum.”

Now keep in mind, this sentiment about Venezuelans is not unique to Andres.

If you didn’t know by now, Venezuela is a bit of a shit hole these days.

Because of that, you have a shit ton of Venezuelans all over Latin America.

Many of them desperate for sure.

Either working in the streets hustling however they can…

To Venezuelan prostitutes everywhere --- no joke, every time I see a Venezuelan chick on Tinder, I assume it’s a prostitute because that’s very common.

Even though, obviously, not all of them do that but you get the idea – quite a few.

Though obviously not all Venezuelans are poor either – you got richer ones who moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina or Miami or Spain, etc…

And obviously not all the poor ones are doing crime either.

But given the amount of Venezuelans who escaped to Colombia, you do have a strong sentiment against them by the locals.

Of course, there was a similar point I wanted to bring up to Andres about all of this.

Some days or maybe a few weeks before, we got talking about Mexican immigrants to the US.

Now, getting political for a second…

I’m not against having immigration from Mexico as I’ve never met a bad Mexican living in the US.

But sure, we have bad folks crossing the border also obviously.

Though I’m also not for illegal immigration – yes, people can be illegal.

So in that sense – no, I’m not for erasing borders completely like some folks in the US want.

There’s simply too many issues with that.

Especially as while there are immigrants leaving for security reasons because someone wants them dead…

First, it shouldn’t be just the responsibility of the US – there are plenty of countries in the world where they could live and why not have a better international process for helping relocate those to countries that are not doing their fair share.

Especially as the US has a shit ton of immigrants and we definitely do our fair share.

As you can read about here....

"According to the United Nations, the United States has the highest number of immigrants (foreign-born individuals), with 48 million in 2015, five times more than in Saudi Arabia (11 million) and six times more than in Canada (7.6 million) (figure below). However, in proportion to their population size, these two countries have significantly more immigrants: 34% and 21%, respectively, versus 15% in the United States."

But also – in my experience – most immigrants I have met in the US or seen crossing through Mexico to the US are leaving to find a better job – but that’s just my experience.

And no hate against those who want a better job – I get it – and it’s the hustle in life to take care of your family – but every country has borders and immigration policy for a variety of reasons and it’s not our job to save the world.

But Andres and I were once talking before all of this – he disapproves the US deporting illegal Mexican immigrants.

And it was just a basic disagreement between us on that topic.

Thankfully, he didn’t go full SJW on my ass for disagreeing that one time – “hitler!! Nazi!!!”

But that minor disagreement between us came to my mind at that point

So I brought it up – “didn’t you say the US shouldn’t deport Mexicans who are illegal in the US?”

“Yeah man but that’s different! These Venezuelans are real scum and should be deported.” He says.

“But I’m sure some are good folks! And if the US shouldn’t respect its border policy, why should Colombia?” I ask.

“It just is man. It’s different. You can’t trust a Venezuelan.” He claims.

Well, we leave it at that but I found the hypocrisy here funny – everyone is entitled to live in the US illegally for whatever reason but Colombia should be allowed to have borders!

Similar Examples

And that mindset is not unusual among Latinos in Latin America that I have met.

Not all obviously but quite a few...

You know, when I was living in Argentina…

I was going on a few dates with a Colombian chick named Cindy who came from Cali, Colombia.

And she had an issue with a politician named Macri who tends to promote anti-immigrant discourse from what I understand. 

Such as wanting a border wall on the Argentine-Bolivian border as you can read here.

And she just felt he was too anti-immigrant – especially being one herself in Colombia.

Unfortunately, I never asked her about her opinion on Venezuelans in Colombia because I hadn’t  been to Colombia yet and heard what Andres said.

But in Argentina anyway, there is a sentiment against immigrants from poorer countries.

Similar to Chile across the border where I remember seeing a video of some Chilean woman berating a Colombian immigrant. 

I couldn't find that video now on a brief Youtube search but I did find other relevant videos like this one below.

In Costa Rica, as you can see here, apparently there is a sentiment against Nicaraguan immigrants.

Which I saw in my limited time there funny enough as a chick I went on a few dates with named Deborah…

Who you can read about here.

Didn’t like Haitian immigrants or basically people who looked very black and poor and she assumed were Haitians.

Which is funny – because she was at least part black herself – but there is a bit of discrimination against folks who look darker in  Latin America – black folks with darker skin than others or indigenous ones.

But either way, that’s just another example.

And I could go on and one..

But let’s cut to the chase now as to where I’m going with this.

The Point

Funny enough, some of the situations above, including the one with Andres, happened before Trump was president or before he even made the comment about “Mexicans bring drugs, crime, etc.”

However, as said before, the first point is to just bring up the hypocrisy many Latinos in Latin America have.

“No borders for the US but borders for our country!”

Second, I feel to a large degree this is just human nature – it happens in most countries.

You know, I think most people are cool with some immigration from other countries and most people feel fine with helping out poorer folks coming by looking for a better life.

However, if you throw in a very large quantity of immigrants from said country in a relatively quick time, that will piss off the locals.

Perhaps because of “outsider-insider mentality.”

Or maybe because a certain percentage of the poorer immigrants are committing crime because of desperation and/or some come from bad backgrounds and were not properly vetted before entering the country because some do so illegally.

And also because most people want their community to feel the same – for the culture, language, etc to  not change.

Or at least not change too rapidly.

Which is a fair concern, in my opinion.

Of course, you do have literal racists who don’t like anyone who looks different than them but most people – regardless of the country – are not concerned about mass immigration because of racism.

At least in my experience.

Most are like the description above – some immigration is fine but too much and opinion changes.

You can see the same happen in Chiapas, Mexico.

Where it is shown that the locals are getting annoyed by the migrants staying and want them to leave and set their belongings on fire!