Brazil has been offering a place of refuge for growing numbers of illegal migrants who are seeking a better life or escaping persecution.
While European countries are desperately trying to cope with the influx of migrants, those who reach the north-west corner of Brazil are being accepted.
The spot, Rio Branco in the state of Acre, practically touches the border of Bolivia and is more than 3,000 kilometres from the capital Brasília.
An informal, bilateral understanding between Brazil and Haiti kick-started the town as a place willing to take migrants. In 2010, Brazil put Rio Branco on the map as a place where victims of the earthquake in Haiti could go.
Word spread and others from Central America joined the Haitians, followed by people from West Africa. Many try to claim asylum as refugees, but nearly all are recognised as economic migrants.
Now more than 100 individuals a day arrive at Rio Branco’s migrant holding centre. The centre has already taken in more than 20,000 from Haiti alone. Everyone is fed and given a mattress for sleeping.
Brazil has permitted the migrants’ arrival because the booming economy in recent years demanded their labour. Work permits and temporary one-year visas have been issued to the majority; some only two weeks after the migrant has arrived.
With these papers, migrants can move around the country to live and work. Many head for Rio Grande so Sul and Santa Catarina where they hope to earn subsistence pay in agriculture and factories.
Official figures state that migrants compose less than 1% of Brazil’s population.
