Deporting Haitians is practically a crime, says Comar head

Nestor Jimenez

La Jornada newspaper
Tuesday, November 23, 2021, p. 6

Most Haitians who have requested refuge in Mexico do so because, by ignoranceThey think that it is the only way to regularize immigration, said Andrés Ramírez, head of the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar).

At the same time, he stated that We are talking about a migration that can be regularized, documented and given all the guarantees so that they can access the labor market in Mexico. It is an effort, he said, that must be directed for that to happen.

During a forum on migration organized by the Universidad Anáhuac, Ramírez explained that the history of the mobility of Haitians is many years old and it is not something accidental.

Haiti is the poorest country in the entire continent, and has also experienced a coup d’état on several occasions, which breaks the path of walking towards development, he added.

The official recalled that since the 1990s, migration has increased from that Caribbean country to different nations, including Cuba, where they arrived. pushed by the windsAs well as to Brazil and other South American countries in the last 10 years, but after a deterioration in the economic situation of these countries, thousands traveled to the United States and Baja California.

I know showed that Haitians, like many migrants, are great workers, and in Mexico they found jobs that the Mexicans themselves did not want, he said.

While in 2016 only 43 Haitians applied for refugee status by granting other means of permission, this year all records have been broken and that community tops the request lists.

Until the first days of November there were already 45 thousand requests from Haitians; 52 thousand if your children of Chilean or Brazilian nationality are taken into account.

The current situation in that country is even worse than 10 years ago, so deport them it’s practically a crime, he stressed.

On the migration issue, the responsibility of all states must be recognized and avoid seeing the notion of international protection as someone who loses and someone who wins, said Sofía Cardona Huerta, senior associate for protection and gender violence issues of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), who stressed that providing international protection can be a everyone wins.