The United States and Mexico favor the containment of migrants

The government of President Joe Biden has reacted ambivalently to the escalation faced by the flow of irregular migration to the United States and implemented actions that have generated some effectiveness in containment, but encourages the exclusion of migrants with serious conditions of vulnerability who They seek asylum, meanwhile, the Mexican government maintains a passive attitude and, in the best of cases, minimally reactive, experts on the subject say.

Figures from the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) allow us to appreciate the exponential growth in the arrival of irregular migrants to that nation.

During the fiscal year 2019 (from October 2018 to September 2019) it registered 859,501 “encounters”; for fiscal year 2021 it increased to one million 662,167 and for 2022 to two million 214,652.

In this sense, Tonatiuh Guillén López, visiting professor of the UNAM Development Studies University Program, explained that, from January to November 2022, the Border Patrol registered around 2.3 million arrivals. Of that amount, 750,000 are Mexican (32.6%).

Of the foreign migrants, an important part comes from Guatemala (around 200,00), El Salvador (80,000) and Honduras (180,000).

In addition, the flow of refugee applicants from Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela skyrocketed, even surpassing those from Central American countries.

From January to November 2022 alone, Cubans detained at the border totaled around 264,000, those from Nicaragua 180,000 and those from Venezuela some 160,000.

The marked increase in this exodus is due to various causes. The researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Colef), María Inés Barrios de la O considered that the main one has to do with the exacerbation of structural factors that, for decades, have forced people to emigrate, such as violence and marginalization, but now, new variables are observed, such as natural disasters, the worsening of the drought, as well as sociopolitical situations.

For the specialist, this has generated a “crisis of care, because neither the United States nor Mexico have the institutional and operational capacity to care for that number of displaced people, especially since in recent years the profile of people in of mobility is changing: many of them are not migrating for economic reasons, but for reasons of survival and are therefore refugee applicants.

Biden’s policies may prove more effective than Trump’s wall

Tonatiuh Guillén López recalled that, when he was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, Joe Biden criticized the measures implemented by then-President Donald Trump, to address the problem, such as the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico, the use of the pandemic of Covid-19 as an argument to reject migrants who knocked on their doors and the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as Stay in Mexico.

However, once he became president, in his policies there were more continuities than breaks with programs implemented in previous administrations, to a large extent, due to the fact that politically he was unable to make major changes, since his room for maneuver was minimal, given the electoral conflict and the composition of the chambers, with a Republican majority.

However, in October 2022 and then on January 5, 2023, it put new provisions into effect, in order to order migration.

In October, it reported that it would grant 65,000 new visas annually for non-agricultural workers, 20,000 of which would be for Central Americans and Haitians, and 24,000 Venezuelans could request a humanitarian entry, as long as they met a series of requirements and entered by air and without go through Mexico.

On January 5, he announced that he will allow the entry of up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela per month, but will toughen the restrictions for those who try to cross the border with Mexico without documents.

For the also former director of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, that completely changed the game and it has been effective in containment, because the arrival of Venezuelans to Mexico, to try to reach the United States, was significantly reduced and is even It is likely that it will also achieve a reduction in the flows of other nationalities.

“The measures that it is taking ‒which have the approval and disposition of the Mexican government ‒, may be a more effective containment strategy than Trump’s wall, although it has many human rights problems by denying the possibility of asylum to a number important of people”.

He stressed that the fact that the Biden government is going to accept the entry of up to 360,000 people, which is a very important number, there can be very crude exclusions and discrimination and that part is what has been criticized, since it would only benefit around than 40% of asylum seekers of those nationalities.

What this policy seeks is to remove the incentives to cross through Mexico to reach the United States to request asylum, because if they do, they can no longer apply for the program, he explained.

For her part, María Inés Barrios de la O highlighted that the current US government is ambivalent: On the one hand, it has stated its intention to end the MPP, so that people could carry out their refugee application processes, as established by law Americans, that is to say that from within that country they start and follow up on their process and do not have to be returned to another country, in this case to Mexico, but in the end it continues to be applied and the use of title 42 has intensified.

It also drew attention that there is greater militarization, not only in terms of the budget, but also in the presence of the military on the border.

He gave as an example what was seen on December 14, when in the El Paso, Texas area, an impressive presence of military artillery was observed to contain migrants, as if they were at war.

Mexico is passive and condescending, they say

Regarding the intervention of the Mexican government, given the considerable increase in migrants on the northern border, Tonatiuh Guillén López said that “Mexico has had a passive, condescending and minimal reactive attitude in the problem.”

In your opinion, you have not implemented any new program. He has remained in an attitude of accepting and being part of the programs implemented by the US government.

“Mexico has had a passive, condescending and minimal reactive attitude in the problem,” he said.

In this regard, he stressed that what is required is consistency, protection measures and humanitarian assistance at the country’s borders and changes in the treatment of migrants so that they do not have an irregular situation in Mexico and are under threat of deportation or detention.

For the specialist, proof of the lack of interest in the matter is that in this government the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) has never had significant resources.

From his perspective, the 118,478 refugee applications submitted to the Comar in 2022 are manageable and are marginal numbers, based on the 130 million inhabitants that the country has.

For the renowned academic, the way out of the problem has to go through the strengthening of the Comar and the processes of refuge and regional inclusion, which is not on the public and government agenda.

In turn, María Inés Barrios de la O said that there has not been a clear and forceful response from the Mexican government, in addition to the fact that the actions it has implemented have not been homogeneous along the northern border.

With the MPP, the United States turned Mexico into a safe third country, when it was not. In the case of Title 42, the Mexican authorities said that it was a unilateral decision of the United States, when it cannot be so, since that nation is returning non-Mexican people to Mexico, he added.

The truth is that Mexico is responding to the lines that the United States is setting, he remarked.

diego.badillo@eleconomista.mx