Reflection of the migration crisis: Asylum applications in Mexico break record

MEXICO, (November 03, 2021).- The United States is not the only country where migration numbers break records, as Mexico received many more asylum applications than ever, a sign that arrests at the northern border do not fully capture the magnitude of the flow of people heading to the north.

In the last 10 months, 108,195 foreigners requested refuge in Mexico, explained Andrés Ramírez, general coordinator of the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (COMAR).

The figure represents an increase of 73 percent over the same period in 2019, the previous record, and is 81 percent more than all the asylum applications filed during the Peña Nieto government, between 2013 and 2018.

The report follows a record 1.7 million encounters by US officials with migrants who crossed the border into Mexico during fiscal year 2021. It comes amid a growing exodus of people heading to the US, many of whom are not from Mexico or Central America, but from other places, such as Latin America and the Caribbean , which have suffered a devastating coronavirus pandemic, natural disasters, and political turmoil.

The number of Haitian and Honduran asylum seekers in Mexico far outnumbered applicants from other countries, followed by Cubans, Salvadorans and Venezuelans, Mexican asylum data shows.

The increase in asylum applications in Mexico is due in part to the refusal of the US government to open its asylum system, said Rodolfo Cruz Piñeiro, director of the population studies department at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana. He added that the Government of Mexico is forced to further open its refugee system. However, the budget allocated for these migrants is limited.

Ramírez, from the country’s refugee office, stressed that many of the recent Brazilian and Chilean asylum seekers in southern Mexico were the children of Haitians who had been in those countries before arriving in Mexico.

Source: El Financiero