BOSTON | A game developed by a Boston-based tech company that allows users to drive a truck full of immigrants through the desert and try not to have them tossed out is drawing fire from some immigrant advocates.
Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration, a proposed iPhone and iPad app by Owlchemy Labs targeted for release in March, lets players navigate through what appears to be the U.S-Mexican border.
As the truck drives over cliffs, mountains and dead animals, immigrants fall off the truck’s bed. Scores are calculated by the number of immigrants helped across the border.
Developer Alex Schwartz said the idea for the satirical game came out of the frustration friends faced while trying to immigrate to the U.S.
“We felt like this issue was kind of a bit taboo for games and popular media,” said Mr. Schwartz. “So we wanted to build something about this struggle.”
Mr. Schwartz said the statement developers wanted to make with the game was this: It is so difficult to legally emigrate to the U.S. that it’s almost easier to smuggle yourself over the border.
But Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrants & Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said the game is in poor taste and trivializes the seriousness of immigrants willing to risk their lives under a broken immigration system.
“Last year 170 human beings died crossing the border,” she said. “It’s disgraceful that anyone would try to make money out of this tragedy by making light of it in a game.”
Patricia Montes, executive director of Centro Presente, a Somerville, Mass.-based Latino immigrant advocacy group, agreed: “I don’t think that people who are trying to emigrate into the U.S. think they are part of a game. They do it because they are desperate.”
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