Activists and migrants stranded on the southern border of Mexico, the third country with the most asylum seekers in the world, They denounced that the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been “a six-year term of death” regarding World Refugee Day, which is commemorated this Thursday.
Among the problems they denounce in Tapachula, the main city on the border of Mexico with Central America, are the discrimination of the Mexican authorities, the increasing operations of the National Migration Institute (INM) and the political effects of pressure from the United States.
“President López Obrador has made a six-year term of death for the migrant community and for Mexicans. Really, we have seen how impunity has reached the highest levels, like the national commissioner (of the INM), Francisco Garduño, it is sad,” the director of the organization Pueblos Sin Fronteras, Irineo Mujica Arzate, told EFE.
Garduño faces criminal proceedings for his alleged responsibility in the fire that killed 40 migrants at an INM station in March 2023 in Ciudad Juárez, on the northern border of Mexico.
In addition, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) last September declared the border between Mexico and the United States as “the most dangerous land migratory route in the world”, with more than 686 migrants dead or missing in 2022.
Many asylum requests and little response
Applications to the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) fell 41.9%, to 36,860 from January to May in Mexico, which in all of 2023 reported a record of 140,982, an increase of 18.2% and the third highest figure in the world after the United States and Germany, according to the Mexican Government.
But Comar recognizes that in 2024 it has barely resolved about one in three cases, 12,709, a situation illustrated by Cuban Pedro Antonio Concepción, who denounced that the organization “erased his wife” from the system with the argument that she did not arrive. in time to sign as he did every week.
“So it’s been eight months since he’s been here (in Tapachula), now he has to wait again for the asylum application process, so we’re working on it to start over,” he told EFE.
This family has a son with an inguinal hernia, so they are looking to get regularized and move to Mexico City to treat him, but they cannot find a way to move forward.
“I have residency as a refugee, I can accept it, but I don’t know the mechanism because they don’t guide you on what to do, whether you have to go to Immigration (the INM) or somewhere else,” he said.
The hope of staying in Mexico
The Mexican government has argued that many asylum applications are not processed because they correspond to migrants who use the country as a mere transit route to the United States.
But Laish, a Brazilian who is three months pregnant, requested this World Refugee Day better opportunities for women seeking to stay in Mexico because in Tapachula they do not have a place to sleep, work and cover their basic needs, as López Obrador promises.
“We are going to wait for the document to be able to live a better life, we want a house, because we live here (in a camp) and I am sweating, waiting for a document because we still don’t know what document it will be and we have to wait. We women sincerely ask the Government to help us,” she said.
In addition to the usual nationalities from Central and South America that usually exist in Mexico, there are also more and more migrants from Africa, such as Carlos Mananga, originally from Angola.
The African considered that there are reasons to celebrate Refugee Day because “it is not easy at all” to get to Mexico after a journey through nine countries in which many people die.
“Here in Mexico we are looking for a job, because we have nothing, we need a better life, without depending on people, we need work, education, health and to have a better life and provide a better life to the people, because they have a law of human rights and all of us are equal,” he said. EFE
“Here in Mexico we are looking for a job, because we have nothing, we need a better life, without depending on people, we need work, education, health and to have a better life and provide a better life to the people, because they have a law of human rights and all of us are equal,” he noted.
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