Mexico has a comparatively easy asylum course of and approves greater than 95 p.c of purposes, overseas minister says.
Functions for refugee standing in Mexico have roughly tripled this yr in contrast with 2020, the federal government has stated, within the face of a big inflow of people bound for the United States.
The country has acquired 123,187 requests in 2021, up from 41,230 final yr, Mexican International Minister Marcelo Ebrard informed reporters on Tuesday, describing the rise as “monumental”.
The federal government and the United Nations had been supporting the Mexican Fee for Refugee Help to take care of a backlog of applications, Ebrard stated, including that the organisation wanted extra personnel and funding.
Mexico has a comparatively easy asylum process and approves greater than 95 p.c of purposes, Ebrard added.
In latest months, tens of 1000’s of migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and violence have arrived in Mexico, the place many are looking for asylum whereas ready to attempt to enter the US.
Individuals smugglers generally conceal undocumented migrants and refugees in vehicles bringing them from Guatemala into Mexico, from the place they head north to the US border.
Underscoring the risks they face, a horrific road accident earlier this month left 56 folks – principally asylum seekers from Guatemala – lifeless after the truck transporting them overturned.
The incident put a highlight on the dangers people face on the road to the US border, typically by the hands of human traffickers often known as coyotes.
Dozens of asylum seekers have died from violence or crashes in Mexico over the previous decade, whereas the US has seen an unprecedented increase within the variety of folks looking for to cross into the nation at its southern border this yr.
A lot of the asylum seekers are from the so-called Northern Triangle nations of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, that are experiencing widespread gang violence and corruption, in addition to excessive charges of poverty and unemployment, amongst different points.
Dominga Tiniguar, who lives in a village known as Xepol in Guatemala, lost her son in the December 9 crash in Mexico. He was a farmworker who deliberate to earn cash within the US earlier than returning to Guatemala.
“He was going to Chicago to work so he may construct a home right here in Xepol and purchase a chunk of land,” Tiniguar informed the Reuters information company, holding a photograph of her son, Elias Salvador Mateo Tiniguar.
This yr has additionally seen a surge in asylum seekers from Haiti arriving in Mexico with the hope of crossing into the US.
However US President Joe Biden’s administration has maintained a Trump-era border closure coverage often known as Title 42. Invoked as a result of coronavirus pandemic, the measure permits US officers to instantly flip again most individuals that arrive on the border with out processing their asylum claims.
The Biden administration additionally resurrected another programme first put in place by Donald Trump to limit immigration into the US. The “Stay in Mexico” coverage forces asylum seekers to attend in Mexico for his or her US immigration hearings.
Rights teams have lambasted the coverage as one which places folks in danger in violence-ridden Mexican border cities or in squalid border camps.
The variety of Haitians claiming asylum in Mexico elevated greater than seven-fold between 2020 and 2021, from 5,935 claims for all of 2020 to 47,494 between January and November 2021, in accordance with Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Migration (INM).
The INM additionally recorded a considerable enhance in Haitian nationals coming into the nation outdoors official ports of entry – from 3,891 in 2019 to 17,516 from January to October of this yr.
Greater than 190,000 undocumented foreigners had been detected in Mexico between January and September, in accordance with authorities. Some 74,300 had been deported.
