Migration | The all-time chaos on the southern border of the United States did not happen – What happened?

Washington

Everyone’s the chaos of the ages. It was predicted for the southern border of the United States, when the authorities abandoned the rule that had enabled the fast-tracking of asylum seekers more than two weeks ago.

There were good grounds for the assumption.

The last few years at the border had been record-breaking. US official sources estimated that there were 150,000 hopefuls behind the border in Mexico waiting for the conversion procedure to change. Representative of the Mexican border city of Tijuana described the situation as unprecedented. President of the United States Joe Biden sent 1,500 more soldiers to the border to maintain order.

However, the predicted avalanche did not occur. The number of detected illegal border crossers actually decreased significantly. Before the change, they were counted more than 10,000 per day, in the following week only around 4,000 per day.

Why?

There is no single clear answer, but there are several partial explanations – and the decrease in unauthorized border crossings cannot yet be interpreted as a new normal state. There are more willing immigrants to the United States than ever, and there is an even stronger demand for labor.

The translation procedure change was seen as an attractive factor, but it’s not that simple.

On May 11, the United States stopped enforcing Section 42 of the Public Health Act, which had allowed citizens of several countries to be quickly turned away at the southern border without having to process their asylum applications. The basis was nominally to protect against the coronavirus pandemic.

However, only about a third of the arrivals had been turned away under Article 42, and on the other hand, the rules at the border were tightened.

Those whose asylum applications are rejected are barred from trying again for several years. In the old special procedure, people could try again and again without losing their status.

In reduced sizes the numbers are specifically about observations, not separate individuals. After the change, there are fewer and fewer people who are repeated in the statistics several times.

Punishing repeated attempts probably also makes people go to greater lengths to make sure they can sneak across the border undetected.

“In many ways, the importance of Article 42 was exaggerated,” he said Muzaffar Chishti From the Migration Policy Institute think tank to the US For Politico.

United States also banned the acceptance of asylum applications from unauthorized border crossers, with certain exceptions, if they cannot prove that they have received a negative protection decision from their transit country. Human rights organizations have heavily criticized this as being against international law.

Biden’s immigration policy cannot be assessed as more permissive than his predecessor’s Donald Trump’sduring which the United States began to apply Article 42.

“Biden’s administration completed its return to Trumpian politics,” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick from the American Immigration Council on Twitter.

Authorities ask asylum seekers to arrive through official border crossing points and make an appointment for an asylum interview using a mobile application. The application has been barked about because there have been clearly fewer available times than bookers, but apparently many have stayed on the Mexican side waiting to get in for an interview.

In addition, since the beginning of the year, the Biden administration had already implemented an arrangement in which it undertakes to accept 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – but they must submit an asylum application from their home country, ensure themselves a financial supporter in the United States and arrive by plane. Mexico is committed to taking in the same number of people that the United States turns away from its land border.

This has been considered the biggest reason for the drop in the number of unauthorized border crossers at the turn of the year.

One the explanation may lie in the fact that many were unsure of the consequences of the change and therefore rushed across the border before it – in the very last months the number of arrivals had increased since the beginning of the year.

News agency AP by Mexican authorities are now trying to keep the migrants away from the US border and have even flown them south of the border towns.

“So the northern part of the Migrant Route is a little empty, but the southern and central parts are still extremely full and will fill up even more”, updated Adam Isaacson From the Wola human rights organization to AP.

“That state of equilibrium clearly cannot be maintained for very long.”

Perhaps however, the most logical explanation for the decrease in arrivals is that no one knew in advance what would happen in practice.

“Immigrant communities are smart,” Chisti told Politico.

“They want to see which position the dice will roll. ‘Let’s see if it leads [tämä] for the admission of more and more, or the conversion of more and more.’”

On the Mexican side, there are organizations that offer accommodation for migrants told to NBC News that many seem to have stopped to reconsider their strategy.