AND
on the eve of meeting of the presidents of Mexico and the United States, and in the face of the disastrous events in Texas where 51 people lost their lives, no issue can precede a definitive solution, or at least an advanced one, to the most serious pending issue in relations between both countries: the painful exodus of migrants in increasingly difficult and uncertain conditions.
The systematic violation of human rights in this hazardous transit of hundreds of thousands of nationals, and also citizens and minors from sister countries in Central America and the Caribbean, is not a problem exclusive to groups and individuals; it is not a product derived only from the reprehensible operation of gangs and criminal organizations –which does not mean exonerating them–, but rather it is a matter of State, which must be resolved at the highest level, with legal provisions, public policies and government actions. , on both sides of the border.
The inertia of an imperialist capitalism, as defined by Lenin and that by nature generates economic imbalances and social inequalities, are the root of a phenomenon that, far from ceasing, is increasing and that requires urgent and in-depth attention, as we have exposed in this same space of reflection.
The figures reveal it. In the last eight months from October 2021 to May 2022, the arrests of Mexican migrants who tried to cross into the United States increased 35.2 percent, compared to the period October 2020 to May 2021, going from 414 thousand 345 to 560 thousand 579 people. Of this figure, an additional alarming fact is that 19,463 were minors traveling alone, without their parents, trying to find a better life horizon.
According to official data from the United States Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP), from 2021 to this year, Mexican migrants lead the arrest figures, surpassing those of immigrants. countries of the Northern Triangle, formed by El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which alters the downward trend that had been observed in this century.
To put it in a timely manner, year after year, the Mexicans arrested for trying to cross the northern border were: in 2019, 237 thousand 78; in 2020, 297 thousand 711; in 2021, 655 thousand 594, and so far in 2022, 560 thousand 579.
Faced with this growing flow, the response of the US government has been to intensify and intensify detention operations, not offering legal and decent work opportunities in an economy, the largest in the world, which has prospered precisely with work, consumption and taxes. generated by migrants, and in many cases also by their families.
The resolutions of the recent Summit of the Americas fully illustrate the distant priority that the needs and anguish derived from poverty and inequality in the Latin American subcontinent represents for public decision makers in the neighboring country, against the current of common sense, which would indicate putting what concerns the hemisphere first.
While for those expelled by the war in Ukraine, the United States government said it was ready to immediately receive 100,000 refugees, for the entire American continent, for those who live from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, the commitment of that country, signed in the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, is to receive 20,000 annually. That is, five times less, when it comes to the same continent, where anyone would think there should be more regional solidarity and brotherhood, as well as group, esprit de corps.
In economic terms, the asymmetry looks even worse: while the United States Congress authorized military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine for 14 billion dollars in March and another 40 billion dollars in May, that is, 54 billion, a figure that could grow if the war conflict continues, to help strategic
intended to inhibit immigration from Latin America, the government of that country promised to manage in December 2021 resources for 1.2 billion dollars and 1.9 billion more under the agreements of the ninth American Summit, that is, 3 $1.1 billion in total. It is a relationship of support of almost 20 to one between one case and another; furthermore, in the latter, uncertain, volatile resources.
In short, for those who come from the south, instead of support and hospitality, there are walls and arrests, a painful and ineffective action, since the border between Mexico and the United States has historically been porous. Due to a law of communicating vessels in the economy, it is normal for the most vulnerable people on the continent to go to the safest and most prosperous place – the north – looking for better living conditions.
That is why the answer has to be profound: in addition to promoting equitable development on the continent, agreements to define temporary legal transits for those who are only looking for a job, in realistic, non-symbolic figures, and facilities to access a regular migratory status for those who They already live, work and consume for years in the United States, as at the time, at the beginning, it was raised by the acting US government itself, a commitment that has not been fulfilled. Legality, security and respect for human rights must be the premise of a new relationship between our countries, linked by geography, history and, to a large extent, by culture, in addition to the necessary care for the environment and climate change.
*President of the Colosio Foundation
