The signs are painted on every wall and hang from every lamp-post of this small Gujarat village. “Easy Canada visa, student and immigration,” states one. “Study in Canada, free application, spouse can apply,” claims another.
Indeed, in Dingucha, a village in rural west India, almost every house now has a family member either in Canada or the USA. It was a fact they used to proudly shout from the rooftops; but now, the village has fallen silent. Ask people about their relatives in north America – particularly the journey they took to get there – and they shrug their shoulders and walk off nervously.
It was a family of four – Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife Vaishali, 37, 11-year-old daughter Vihangi and three-year-old sin Dharmik – who set off from Dingucha on 10 January, with Canada visitor visas stamped in their passports. They landed in Toronto on 12 January. Patel called his father and cousin back in India to let them know that it was cold, but they were all fine and in a hotel.
Six days later, the young family arrived in Emerson, a tiny town on the Canada-US border where night-time temperatures regularly drop below -35 degrees centigrade in the winter. It appears they were dropped off at a nearby point in brand new coats and gloves, and then began making the treacherous journey to America on foot, in the pitch dark, through what one local described as a freezing, “lunar-like landscape”. The next night, the Patel family were discovered frozen to death in…
