The family that froze to death a world away from home.

The night Vaishaliben Patel, her husband Jagdish and their two children set out for the US-Canadian border they dressed in new heavy winter coats and snow boots. Temperatures where they walked, in Emerson, Manitoba, had dropped more than 35 degrees below freezing.

As they walked - maybe for a couple of hours, maybe for more - sharp winds carried snow and shards of ice across the plains, reducing visibility to nothing.

Canadian police found the four of them - Vaishaliben, 37, Jagdish, 39, their daughter, Vihangi, 11 and son, Dharmik, 3 - lying together, frozen, in an empty field on 19 January. They had died 12 metres from the US border.

The mysterious case of a young family that made its way from an unassuming village in Gujarat, India, to the bitter reaches of Manitoba, half a world away, has shocked Canadians and Indians alike, exposing the intense pressures and economic anxieties that may have led to tragedy.

Officials have said they believe the family's deaths to be a case of human smuggling, and authorities in the US and Canada are still trying to determine how the Patels reached Emerson and who may have led them there, ultimately to their deaths.
The Patels were found near Emerson, Manitoba, thousands of miles away from home in Dingucha. Some 12,000km away from Emerson, the town is home to about 3,500 residents, mostly middle-class agricultural workers and labourers in the province of Gujarat.

There, the Patels lived in a neat two-storey home with a rooftop balcony and a large welcome sign painted over the door. Their home sits snug among a line of row houses - concrete buildings painted yellow, pink and white.

Some residents apparently knew of the Patels' plans to travel, telling the BBC's Gujarati service that they went to Canada on visitor's visas.

On or about 12 January, the Patel's arrived in Canada on a flight to Toronto before traveling 2,000km (1,200 miles) west to Manitoba.

Police have not determined how they got to Emerson - by land or sky - though there is no record of them boarding a domestic flight.
The drive would have been long - 22 hours on the Trans-Canada Highway.

The town has one pharmacy, one grocery store, one school. The houses are modest single-storey homes with single-car garages and large yards. Residents call it a retirement town - a pleasant place to live, with not much to do.

The cold feels "like a dog biting your hand and not letting go", said George Andrawess, who runs Emerson's lone pharmacy, five minute's walk from the border.
"Your tears will freeze in your eyes," he said.

Both Jagdish and Vaishaliben were educated, local media said, at one point working as teachers. Like many other Gujaratis, the Patels had a second home nearby, in the nearest middle-class town, Kalol.
Their parents were often nearby, also dividing their time between Kalol and Dingucha.

Yet despite the appearances of a well-anchored life in India, something compelled the Patels to leave.

In Dingucha, this is common, residents told the BBC.

"Every child here grows with the dream of moving to a foreign country," a Dingucha councilman said.

Many locals spoke of an intense and pervasive social pressure to move abroad, with social status determined by connections in foreign countries. Those who stay are seen as incapable of raising the funds to leave, everyone else moves on, some said.

In Winnipeg, Indo-Canadians said they knew well the "craze" for moving abroad among middle and upper-middle class Indians.

"People think there are dollar trees here," said Mitesh Trivedi, a Gujarati-Canadian. "I had that in my mind when I came, I was 26 years old."

Mr Trivedi, now 59, settled in Canada three decades ago on a marriage visa and became a citizen in 2000. In many ways, his is the life that Indian economic migrants aspire to abroad: He owns a profitable restaurant, has raised a family, and his two daughters both hold graduate degrees in the medical field.

Though he was highly educated in India - Mr Trivedi is an engineer by training - upward mobility would have been limited there. "I was born lower-middle class. If I had stayed, I would have died lower-middle class," he said.

According to Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, the country is experiencing an influx of irregular migration.

Most of these crossings are northbound - with migrants trying to cross into Canada from the US.

Last year, about 4,000 people were found trying to enter Canada this way, compared to 900 crossing into the US.

Emerson itself, with its wide stretch of unguarded border, is considered a hotspot for illegal crossings. US Border Patrol recently named this area as a high incident spot for human smuggling.

In 2017, two migrants from Ghana were badly injured by frostbite, each losing several fingers, when they tried to make the trek into Canada from the US. At the time, Emerson locals told the BBC they were afraid someone would die trying to make it across.

Police on both sides of the border have said that the Patels' case is probably linked to human smuggling.

But for the Patels, the central questions are left unanswered: what was waiting for them across the plains, was it worth the risk, or did they even know the risk they were taking?.

They didn't even make it to the border. In their final moments, they may not have known where they were at all.

"This story reminds me of Nigerians who are desperate to go abroad at all cost".

SOURCE BELOW
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60290955

RIP to them.

But it's not by force to travel out na.

Life's hard... Everyone is jus seeking for pastures green that atleast guarantees them and their families beta opportunities and a beta life

Indians can go to any length just to leave their humble country yet they will come to Nigeria and turn to gods.

Yet, they are struggling and dying by the numbers just to enter another man's country where nobody bothers about their existence

Too bad

The remaining people in the group made it, but were arrested and deported. They took a stupid risk and paid with their lives.

Indians and Nigerians can do desperate waka just to get to a foreign land.
Brainwashing everywhere