MIAMI, United States.- More than 8,000 Cubans requested refuge in Mexico last April, thus making the island the second country with the highest number of refugee applications in the Aztec nation, according to data released this Wednesday by the Commission Mexican Aid to Refugees (Comar).
According to a graph published by Comar in its official account of Twitter, at the end of April 2022, a total of 8,445 Cubans had requested refuge from the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The country was only surpassed by Honduras, with 8,848 requests.
The numbers of people seeking refuge in Mexico have increased exponentially in the last three years. In April 2020, some 969 people requested documentation to stay in the country, this past April 2022, 10,466 did so.
Local media say that Mexico, the third largest recipient of refugee claims in the world, began to see an increase in refugee claims after former President Enrique Peña Nieto established the Southern Border Program.
The place where a greater number of people apply for this condition in Mexico is through Tapachula, state of Chiapas, in the south of the country and bordering Guatemala.
Last years
According to data from Comar, people from Cuba have been among the ten nationalities that most request asylum in Mexico since 2017.
From 2018 to date, 22,973 Cubans have applied for refuge with Comar.
During this period, it was the year 2019 when Cubans requested the most requests. In 2020 the numbers dropped, as a consequence of the closure of the borders on the island due to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, in 2021 the number of refugee applications from Cubans in Mexico returned to the levels of 2019 and the island rose to third place in this category, only preceded by Haiti and Honduras.
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