Why risk life to escape?

Recently, Mexico deported 311 Indians who were trying to sneak into the US illegally. "Spending nights in forests, tripping over corpses and surviving without adequate food in refugee camps, after they spent lakhs of rupees to chase their US dream, was the common ordeal..." "Some of the prospective (illegal) immigrants had paid upwards of $20,000 (approximately Rs 14 lakh, or Rs 1.4 million) per head to human traffickers to make the journey across oceans, jungles and deserts; one family of four paid $50,000," wrote C Rajghatta. Why spend so much money, enough to live in comfort for a few years in India? Because of the American dream, despite the present government being of "nativist, isolationist dispensation". "The more worrisome reason for New Delhi is that India offers so little hope that some young men who are able to raise $20,000 prefer to use it to flee the country rather than use it at home to build a life." Because, "they have assessed that the risk-reward return from chasing the American Dream is better than investing it in what they probably consider an Indian nightmare". The clue: "India's unemployment rate in October rose to 8.5%, the highest since August 2016, and up from 7.2% in September, according to data released by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on Friday, reflecting the impact of a slowdown in the economy." With no jobs, majority of Indians are self-employed, earning between Rs 2,500 and Rs 10,000 per month, wrote Anand and Thampi. Even with cheaper cost of living it is impossible to survive on such meager earnings. Only 4% employ other people. Deindustrialisation and petty politics have led to the rise of ghost cities in India, such as Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu and Amravati in Andhra Pradesh, wrote Sridhar and Vishal. The slowdown is because the economy "in the absence of little or no investment over the last several years, has essentially been running on the single engine of consumption", wrote A Padmanabhan, a staunch supporter of the government. Recently, the Supreme Court ordered the three remaining telecom companies to pay around $13 billion in licence fees, penalties and interest to the government. This will probably cause Voda Idea to go bankrupt leaving two companies behind. "India's statist politicians seem to assume that every sector is a cash cow for their, welfarism, and that foreign investors can't quit India. They had better think again," wrote Mihir Sharma. "Owners of fractured farms and blue collar labor may be spending $20,000 to flee, but white collar workforce is spending as much as $200,000 to exit, mostly through legal means," Rajghatta. India is largely at peace. So why are so many willing to sell their homes and risk their lives to escape? That is the real indicator of misery.