Asylum applications to Mexico: Giselle Arellano in perspective.

Denver CO

02 December, 2021

9:46 PM

Description

Mexico is today under increasing pressure with the continuous arrival of people with clear and more complex needs to its two borders. Giselle Arellano agrees with the paradoxical dilemma: there cannot be a single answer to a plurality of solutions, situations and alternatives to consider in the asylum system, when it is necessary to ensure decisive actions for migrant people and achieve effective integration. In particular and recently, asylum applications in Mexico have increased (increasing to 116,000 in 202) by 46% compared to 2020, in a context in which it is necessary to advocate for solutions that are truly comprehensive, inclusive and of regional approach to face this immensely changing migratory phenomenon. We assume that currently asylum requests to the United States are not likely to be accepted, therefore, people tend to stay in neighboring countries, mainly Mexico, according to the report "Global trends of forced displacement in 2020" of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Thus, although the intended destination of people who move from these three countries continues to be, in general, the United States, more and more are settling in Mexico, and a much smaller number are heading south, to Costa Rica and Panama. . For this reason, those who are arriving in Mexico, like other countries, are people with different protection urgencies, to use the country as a corridor, to flee from precarious situations or to pursue better opportunities. However, the confinement measures also limited people's possibilities to flee and worsened their exposure to situations of violence and persecution. Organizations and human rights defenders have argued that the systematic returns caused a collapse of accommodation capacities in the border regions of Mexico, where thousands of people congregate in fields of fortune, at the mercy of the criminal organizations that operate there. The Ministry of Foreign Relations (SRE) stated that Mexico would necessarily require additional resources from the United States, so that these could be allocated to shelters and international organizations in order to improve the conditions for migrants and asylum seekers in a concrete way. These days, the governments of the United States and Mexico have announced that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Guard, and various international agencies are entering into negotiations regarding these concerns, although these well-thought-out agreements Migrations between the two countries have largely developed out of the public eye. Giselle Arellano emphasizes the need for both governments to promptly address these humanitarian issues. It is clear that the Mexican asylum system is far from perfect, concrete and coherent procedures are required that are capable of setting an example for best practices that could provide significant benefits with manageable challenges.