They don't know any other way to live other than how they were living before they were incentivized and encouraged to head north to the USA. The difference between South American and US Shanty towns is in South America you won't see nearly as much trash because most everything gets used.
Hopefully, they bring waste-not-want-not attitudes and habits and maybe teach the homeless, who are already here.
Some (not all) shanty-towns are actually not bad sanitation-wise (depends hugely on availability of clean water and community cooperation in waste disposal), so hopefully those practices are used or adapted and taught to the homeless already here. There are so many resources available in the US that people used to doing everything with nothing will be able to do an awful lot and standard of living in a shantytown here may well be significantly better than a shantytown there.
The churches here are extremely active and embedded in all areas of community here, so I have reason to hope that between habits of self-reliance and the help and sponsorship provided by the churches and Christian immigration/refugee organizations that it won't be as bad as some think. The winter here will also impact relative numbers, as it already does with homeless populations. Unfortunately, it could also lead to a lot of deadly fires in shantytowns. TPTB here do down homeless encampments in winter and force people to leave, go to shelters, or go to jail, but I don't know if they'd be able to do this with an actual shantytown, short of burning or razing. As liberal as it is here, wholesale destruction wouldn't be considered or tolerated. Nor would the air pollution, etc. caused by such destruction.
Maybe non-homeless Americans can learn something. There's an awful lot of stuff that needlessly goes in the garbage and landfills that could be repurposed, recycled, composted, etc. I could see migrants with a very different mind-set going through garbage and recycle bins the night before and ahead of the pick-up trucks. I've seen that on a very limited scale here, and it's more prevalent in some communities than others. Spring clean-up day/curbside pick-up is the exception; constant stream of people going by looking for useful, salvageable, and scrapable items. People try to put reusable stuff out in such a way it's obvious, plus there's a lot of stuff that is in the bins, boxes, and stacked up, but Americans used to throwing everything away don't realize.
I like that some communities here, in addition to having single-stream curbside recycling, have organic reclamation, no-question-no-hassle household hazmat drop-off, and other programs that help divert and reuse some stuff that otherwise would go to landfills. Some places have large item pick-up/drop-off, which have volunteers or employees that go through said items and repair and refurbish what can be reused, and donate to different types of shelters and charities. Places that have reservation-type pick-up of large items ask what is being picked up so they know whether to send the "clean" truck, "dirty truck," or someone to look first.
As always, the key to how this turns out is going to be the Church. Realistically, migrants are here and more are coming, so we need to be about The Lord's business as He provides opportunities. FWIW, a lot of the migrants that have ended up here are already Christians and using their language, culture, etc. for evangelizing unsaved from similar cultures, circumstances, or languages here.
ray
ray :amen
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