The migration crisis continues to overwhelm Mexico. From January to October 2021, the country has received 108,195 asylum requests, its largest record in history, as reported on Tuesday by the Mexican Commission for Refugee Aid (Comar). In the first 10 months of the year, the number of requests has tripled compared to the same period in 2020 when about 41,000 procedures were counted. In addition, the figure exceeds by 80% the total of 171,210 migrants who sought refugee status in Mexico throughout the past six-year period, according to the accumulated from 2013 to 2018 by the Ministry of the Interior (Segob).
The exponential increase in asylum requests was already foreseen by the Mexican government since the first quarter of the year. Just last April, the head of the Comar, Andrés Ramírez, estimated that 2021 would close with more than 80,000 requests. However, his calculations have been far exceeded. Two months before the end of the year, Mexico has for the first time in history exceeded 100,000 applications received in that period of time. “Comparing the period January-October 2021 with the same period of 2019 and 2020 in relation to the number of applicants for refugee status, the increase has been 73% this year compared to the same period of 2019 and 238% compared to of 2020 ″, has pointed out Ramírez.
The record numbers do not end. Only in October, the agency that depends on the Government also counted the maximum number of requests received in a single month with 18,034 registrations, a number that exceeds the 13,065 in August, until then the previous highest figure. On the other hand, despite the historical number of petitions, Comar only reports having resolved 31,787 cases so far this year, just under a third of those received.
Haiti tops the list of nations where applicants come from for the first time, with 37,849 requests at the end of October, almost 35% of the total, the report continues. The second place is occupied by Honduras with 33,578 applications (about 33%), and the third Cuba, with 7,915 (less than 10%). They are followed by El Salvador (with 5,433 records), Chile (5,294), Venezuela (5,113), Guatemala (3,799), Nicaragua (2,655), Brazil (2,499) and Colombia (1,046).
In the case of the applicants from Chile and Brazil, the majority are children of Haitians who had been in those countries before arriving in Mexico, Ramírez said. “With Chileans, 5,294, and Brazilians, 2,449, both children of Haitians, the number (of applicants from Haiti) reaches 45,592,” he said.
The report is released amid a growing wave of immigration to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office reported a record of more than 1.7 million “encounters” in October. used to call for migrant detentions. The record of this fiscal year, which runs from November 2020 to October 2021, triples the average number of arrests from 2012 to 2020 in the North American country. At the same time that the economic and violent crisis that plagues Latin America has multiplied the number of migrants who have seen the United States as a better option to survive.
En route from south to north to the American dream, the last country before reaching the United States has become one of the worst nightmares for the thousands of people who have left their countries. Mexico is the main expulsion of migrants, according to the latest CBP report. For those who remain in Mexico, it is difficult to regularize their situation. According to the Comar report, since their records began in 2013, the agency has received almost 280,000 applications, but it has only granted shelter to about 66,400 people.
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