Let's take immigrant workers to the United States as an example, as opposed to say, the casual tourist who is going abroad without documents.
Large numbers of immigrants cross the border without documents each year because of the employment opportunities available here, and the poverty south of that border. The dangers involved in this are significant and physical as well as legal.
About ten percent of my students are undocumented, and the stories I have heard over the years about their border crossing experiences are scary indeed. Paying off coyotes (smugglers) who sometimes steal their possessions and leave them in the desert, crossing wide open tracts of desert on foot without adequate food or water, and often with small children, being robbed or assaulted on the way to the border, being kidnapped and sold into slavery or sexually exploited. These are all very real dangers and realities for undocumented workers trying to cross the southern border into the US, not to mention the chances of being caught and deported to go through the process all over again.
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