‘Paraiso Travel’ Shows the High Price of Immigration

Paraiso Travel, a movie about a Colombian couple’s illegal passage to the U.S., was released on DVD earlier this month. It’s also available to watch instantly on Netflix. The film set box office records in Colombia and won awards at multiple film festivals in the U.S.

I would rank the movie somewhere between Maria Full of Grace and Sin Nombre. Like Maria Full of Grace, Paraiso demonstrates the high price that immigrating to the U.S. exacts on those who choose to do it illegally. Unlike Sin Nombre, the movie avoids being gratuitously violent.

Even so, like many other movies before it, Paraiso Travel shows how illegal immigrants are subjected to a gauntlet of fraud, physical abuse, and squalid working conditions.

The movie manages to show the bright side of immigration too. The male half of the couple–Marlon–is enterprising and industrious in adapting to life in the U.S. But to truly adjust to his new life, he needs to rid himself of his fixation with Reina–the girl who seduces him into leaving Colombia.

One area where Paraiso Travel comes up short is laying the groundwork for why Marlon–who was headed for college–would want to leave his middle class lifestyle in Colombia to clean toilets in the U.S. Reina is a persuasive temptress, but she hardly seems worth the steep price that Marlon ends up paying.

Risking it All. Risking it all to come to the U.S. made more sense in Maria Full of Grace. She was pregnant, out of work, and lived in a cramped apartment with her annoying siblings.

In any case, examining the ordeal that most illegal immigrants go through to build a life for themselves in the U.S. goes a long way toward dispelling the notion that they are the “freeloaders” that some political pundits make them out to be. Many of them have a paid a price that is difficult to imagine.

Here is what Time magazine and the New York Times said about Paraiso Travel.

What did you think of Maria Full of Grace, Paraiso Travel, or Sin Nombre?