Uprooted again: Venezuela migrants cross US border in droves - Arab News

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• Uprooted again: Venezuela migrants cross US border in droves - Arab News
• Deep dive: what is the future of family travel during the pandemic? - Globetrender
• Alaska Travel On a Budget: Things to Do - The New York Times

Uprooted again: Venezuela migrants cross US border in droves - Arab News Posted: 27 Jun 2021 10:17 PM PDT DEL RIO, Texas: Marianela Rojas huddles in prayer with fellow migrants after trudging across a slow-flowing stretch of the Rio Grande and nearly collapsing when she stepped on American soil for the first time. "I won't say it again," interrupts a US Border Patrol agent, giving orders in Spanish for Rojas and a group of 14 other Venezuelans to get into a detention van. "Only passports and money in your hands. Everything else — earrings, chains, rings, watches — in your backpacks." It's a frequent scene across the US-Mexico border at a time of swelling migration. But these aren't farmers and low-wage workers from Mexico or Central America, who make up the bulk of those crossing. Among them are bankers, doctors and engineers from Venezuela, and they're arriving in record numbers as they flee turmoil in the country with the world's largest oil reserves and pandemic-induced pain across South America. Two days after Rojas crossed, she left detention and got a bus out of the Texas town of Del Rio. The 54-year-old fled hardship in Venezuela a few years ago, leaving a paid-off home and career as an elementary school teacher for a fresh start in Ecuador. But when the housecleaning work she found dried up, she decided to uproot again. "It's over, it's all over," she said on the phone to loved ones. "Everything was perfect. I didn't stop moving for one second." Last month, 7,484 Venezuelans were encountered by Border Patrol agents along the US-Mexico border — more than all 14 years for which records exist. The surprise increase is a harbinger of a new type of migration that has caught the Biden administration off guard: pandemic refugees. Many of the nearly 17,306 Venezuelans who have crossed the southern border illegally since January had been living for years in other South American countries, part of an exodus of millions since President Nicolás Maduro took power in 2013. While some are government opponents, the vast majority are escaping long-running economic devastation marked by blackouts and shortages of food and medicine. With the pandemic still raging in parts of South America, they relocated again. Increasingly, they're being joined at the US border by people from the countries they initially fled to — like Ecuador and Brazil — as well as far-flung nations hit hard by the virus, like India and Uzbekistan. Compared with other migrants, Venezuelans garner certain privileges — a reflection of their firmer financial standing, higher education levels and US policies that have failed to remove Maduro but nonetheless made deportation all but impossible. The vast majority enter the US near Del Rio, a town of 35,000, and don't evade detention but turn themselves in to seek asylum. Like many of the dozens of Venezuelans The Associated Press spoke to this month in Del Rio, 27-year-old Lis Briceno had already migrated once before. After graduating with a degree in petroleum engineering, she couldn't get hired in the oil fields near her hometown of Maracaibo without declaring her loyalty to Venezuela's socialist leadership. So she moved to Chile a few years ago, finding work with a technology company. But as anti-government unrest and the pandemic tanked Chile's economy, her company shuttered. Briceno sold what she could to raise the $4,000 needed to get to the US "I always thought I'd come here on vacation, to visit the places you see in the movies," Briceno said. "But doing this? Never." While Central Americans and others can spend months getting north, most Venezuelans reach the US in as little as four days. "This is a journey they're definitely prepared for from a financial standpoint," said Tiffany Burrow, who runs the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition's shelter in Del Rio, where migrants can eat, clean up and buy bus tickets to US cities. They first fly to Mexico City or Cancun. Smugglers promoting themselves as "travel agencies" on Facebook claim to offer hassle-free transport to the US for about $3,000. The steep price includes a guided sendoff from Ciudad Acuna, where the bulk of Venezuelans cross the Rio Grande and which had been largely spared the violence seen elsewhere on the border. "If you're a smuggler in the business of moving a commodity — because that's how they view money, guns, people, drugs and everything they move, as a product — then you want to move it through the safest area possible charging the highest price," said Austin L. Skero II, chief of the US Border Patrol's Del Rio sector. Once in the US, Venezuelans tend to fare better than other groups. In March, Biden granted Temporary Protected Status to an estimated 320,000 Venezuelans, protecting them from deportation and allowing them to work legally. Also, Venezuelans requesting asylum — as almost all do — tend to succeed, partly because the US government corroborates reports of political repression. Only 26 percent of asylum requests from Venezuelans have been denied this year, compared with an 80 percent rejection rate for asylum-seekers from poorer, violence-plagued countries in Central America, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. "I can write their asylum requests almost by heart," said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration attorney in Harlingen, Texas, who has represented over 100 Venezuelans. "These are higher-educated people who can advocate for themselves and tell their story in a chronological, clean way that judges are accustomed to thinking." Even Venezuelans facing deportation have hope. The Trump administration broke diplomatic relations with Maduro in 2019, so air travel is suspended, even charter flights, making removal next to impossible. Briceno said that if she had stayed in Venezuela, she would earn the equivalent of $50 a month — barely enough to scrape by. "The truth is," Briceno said, "it's better to wash toilets here than being an engineer over there."

Deep dive: what is the future of family travel during the pandemic? - Globetrender Posted: 04 Feb 2021 12:00 AM PST From schoolcations to reunion vacations, Jenny Southan, editor and founder of Globetrender, shares her predictions for the future of family travel. When it comes to the major changes taking place in family travel, there are three trends from our Travel in the Age of Covid-19 report that stand out. 1. Domestic Sanctity Because of the travel restrictions and quarantine measures we are facing, which make travel for families particularly difficult (or impossible during the UK ban on holidays that we are currently experiencing), the only way to guarantee a relatively hassle-free vacation is to book a trip within your own country. A while ago, I spoke to one father who has four daughters and had booked to go to the Maldives at half-term but chose to cancel because they will need to quarantine for two weeks when they get back and although the parents can work from home, the kids will need to go back to school. Instead he said he would book a week at CenterParcs, which is a network of purpose-built resort villages in forested areas of the UK. This will be a typical situation for many families. We are definitely going to see a lot of domestic travel continue throughout 2021. This is down to various factors but primarily the cost of PCR testing to get "fit to fly" certificates, which will cost hundreds of pounds each way for a family, but also the risk (in the UK) of being forced into a quarantine hotel on return, which would be a disaster. 2. Isolation Vacations In this case, for families at the lower end of the scale budget-wise, we are talking about villa rentals, bubble tours and safaris, while at the higher end we are adding on personal chefs, private jet flights, helicopter transfers, and even entire hotel and private island takeovers. For example Thanda Island in Tanzania can sleep ten adults and eight children and can be hired for US$25,000 per night. 3. Ultra Flexibility Parents are particularly sensitive to disappointing their children if they have to cancel or postpone a trip but the fact is, there is a huge amount of gambling taking place as we have seen with the attempts to book summer holidays to Europe last year and the ever-changing quarantine rules, and then having to rush home if the government decides to change the FCO advice at the last minute. As we move forward, airlines and hotels are going to be far more flexible when it comes to rules around date changes and cancellations in a bid to encourage bookings. United Airlines in the US for example has scrapped all change fees for domestic flights permanently. What other trends will we see taking off in 2021? Whereas Wilderness Seeking is a wider trend that is emerging from the pandemic, I would say that for families, being near enough to civilisation, airports and healthcare facilities will be important. After months cooped up at home, families are definitely craving nature-based, outdoorsy holidays, with an emphasis on spending time on farms, ranches and self-sufficient retreats, harvesting vegetables, living off the land, foraging, learning cultivation techniques to take back home to your own garden/allotment. This trend has been referred to as "agrotourism" but I would specifically describe it as the rise of the Cultivacation. The Toglerhorf Apple Hotel in Italy and One Cat Farm in Wales would be great places to head to for this kind of experience. Everyone is aware of the rise of camping and glamping (even trendy hotel chain Hoxton launched its own glampsite in the UK called Camp Hox last summer), but I would highlight the rise of Glampervan Road Trips over the next year, with both sales of RVs as well as rentals going through the roof. Travelling in your own vehicle is the safest way to get around and glampervans offer more comfort, self sufficiency and freedom than a car. Reunion Vacations with grandparents – who will hopefully have been recently vaccinated – and other relatives will also be big. We will see people staying with family members overseas in their own homes or renting properties. We can also expect to see a rise in people buying holiday homes for themselves to future proof their family vacations down the line. City breaks, however, will be low in terms of desirability (although you could argue that now is the best time to visit somewhere like Venice). We are going to see far less "facility-heavy" holidays that rely on things like theme parks and crowded resorts with water parks and activity centres. Although family cruises have grown massively over the last five years, Covid has put an end to that for the time being. New requirements will be for all passengers to have been vaccinated before coming on board – as children will be the last to get the jab, this will make cruises harder for families in 2021. What trends do you see in how families will be filling their time while on holiday? We are definitely seeing a shift away from theme parks to national parks. Parents will be being forced to be more creative in their holiday planning as previously reliable, crowd-pleasing options such as Disneyland are off the menu. We will see a lot of time being spent on beaches and in woodland – a return to nature and simplicity. Families will be surfing, swimming, building campfires, doing bushcraft, canoeing, hiring canal boats, staying at county house hotels, cycling and hiking. Last summer, in the UK, I saw a flood of my peers rushing to stay at Birch, for example, which is a new member's community and hotel north of London that is described as an "escape from urban living" and offers lots of workshops and activities for both adults and kids. They offer a young adventurers club, bird box building, glassblowing, pottery and soda bread masterclasses. I think there will be an emphasis on using travel to help supplement children's education, which has been compromised during the pandemic, but vacations will also rightly be about having fun, embracing freedom, socialising and seeing new things because their lives have been limited for so many months. What trends are you seeing more broadly in travel that might indicate an increased demand for long-term school alternatives? Is this something you see becoming more normalised? If so, how do you think this will impact family travel plans? From Globetrender's perspective, working from anywhere will be the big trend to emerge from the pandemic. We have actually launched a dedicated WFA section on our website that looks at the acceleration of digital nomadism, untethered living will free us all up now it has been proven that working from home can be done effectively. Radical Sabbaticals was a trend that we identified in our Future of Luxury Travel report and this is definitely something that is going to grow as a consequence of being able to work – and learn – from anywhere. In the UK, in 2018, the number of children being homeschooled had risen by about 40 per cent over three years so there has already been an upward trend. A recent poll by childcare.co.uk has revealed that 24.3 per cent of parents are more likely to home school their children after the coronavirus pandemic is over. After a long period of living in an isolated, tech-focused environment, there will be a desire for families to open up their perspectives. Covid has actually opened up an incredible opportunity to live an untethered lifestyle – and possibly even relocate away from urban environments or to countries abroad. I think we will see a rise in Workaway Retreats for families, much in the way co-working retreats for digital nomads and even trendy co-living communes have exploded in recent years. We will see Paradise Relocations to places such as Barbados which is offering one year digital nomad visas that cost US$3,000 for families. Schoolcations and Upskilling Escape whereby families can enjoy a break in a beautiful destination while children can catch up on lost learning – Puente Romano Beach Resort in Spain is now offering private tutors to families with children. Classes take place in hotel suites and can be extended post-holiday with zoom tutoring. The hotel says it will provide "reassurance for families, particularly those parents who are able to work remotely and may choose to extend a stay with us". I also predict that with the rise of remote working among parents who are consequently spending more time at home with their kids, in the longer term we will see a rise in American-style Summer Camps. They might not go too far from home (we could see an increase in local Day Camps), but the idea would be to have a break from one another – the kids get time away with their peers and the parents get time alone, which they would previously have got when the kids were at school. At the moment these have been closed in the UK. However, an interesting trend that has emerged has been parents sending their kids abroad to summer camps abroad in countries with fewer restrictions. I could imagine that the parents might go too, and work from there remotely. These insights were originally shared on a webinar discussing the future of family travel, hosted by luxury travel company Black Tomato, and have since been updated for 2021.

Alaska Travel On a Budget: Things to Do - The New York Times Posted: 13 May 2021 12:00 AM PDT Car, bus, train or plane? Among the many modes of land transportation in Alaska, interior flights are expedient, trains are scenic, buses are a relative bargain and driving may be more economical for a group, according to travel planners. If you fly into Anchorage or Fairbanks, you're in what's known as the "railbelt" of Alaska, served by the Alaska Railroad, which also runs south of Anchorage to Seward. Travelers can upgrade to domed cars for best viewing to Seward on the railroad's GoldStar Service ($224 one way from Anchorage in early June, compared to $113 in regular cars) or to Denali with the private Wilderness Express service ($249 from Anchorage, versus $176). A Park Connection bus between Denali and Anchorage costs $100 one way in summer. Like other parts of the country, Alaska is experiencing a rental car crunch as demand outpaces supply, resulting in higher rates, nearly double statewide compared to 2019, according to Kayak. "All over the U.S.A., we're seeing elevated car rental prices, but it can still be cheaper than piecing together train and motor coach combinations, particularly if you're more than two travelers," said Anna Harrison, the owner of the agency Travel Observations in Pittsburgh. Rental cars, however, are hard to find this summer. Clicking around the Avis Alaska site for a rental car recently, I couldn't find a weeklong rental, a compact for $473, until late August. Travel experts warn against one-way car rentals, which are more costly than round-trips. Day trips vs. road trips Two more ways to save include basing yourself in Anchorage, which has a range of accommodations, and doing day trips, or rent a car, camper van or R.V. and camping. "Anchorage is great as a base for those who are short on time and who don't like moving around each night," Ms. Harrison said, noting that travelers looking to use loyalty points or miles are more likely to be able to do so in the city.

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