Emir Olivares Alonso
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, April 18, 2022, p. 9
An annual tax contribution of 105 million pesos has generated 18,000 refugee applicants for the country, who have been relocated to cities in Mexico by the country office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
These migrants participate in the Local Integration Program (PIL) with which they are supported to move from entities in the south to several in the center and north, where job opportunities and social integration are opened up for them.
Thanks to this project, which began in 2016, as of February 28, more than 18,000 refugees have been relocated, 66 percent of whom are adults of working age and 33 percent of children, adolescents and older adults.
The average monthly salary they receive is 6,728 pesos and, based on a preliminary review of payroll receipts, the current tax miscellany and the calculation of worker contributions to the Mexican Institute of Social Security (carried out by Acnur), It is estimated that these people pay 458 pesos of ISR, 491 of VAT, 160 of workers’ quota for the IMSS.
The PIL is a project with which the UNHCR in Mexico accompanies the process of local integration of people from the transfer to the reception, employment and educational link, search for housing and psychosocial support. It has the support of the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The calculations foresee that in 2022 there will be more than 30 thousand relocations, which would represent 13 thousand 185 employed people, with a spill of 175.5 million pesos in taxes and state contributions.
The UNHCR explained that if in 2022 the program is extended to all asylum seekers in 2021 -more than 130 thousand-, in six months Mexico would collect almost 383 million pesos in tax contributions. The UN agency considered that the impact of the contributions of refugees would be catalyzed with an additional effort of inclusion in the formal labor market of internally displaced persons and deportees from the United States
.
The program has shown its relevance, since, according to the data, five times more jobs are created in the integration spaces in the center and in the north of the country with respect to the states of identification of refugee cases hired in the south, where 83 percent of asylum applications are concentrated, according to Comar.
The figures indicate that thanks to the PIL in the fourth quarter of 2021, 308,569 jobs were created in central and northern entities: 83,364 in Nuevo León; 69 thousand 632 in Jalisco; 42,220 in Guanajuato; 33 thousand 180 in Querétaro; 32 thousand nine in Coahuila; 21 thousand 550 in Puebla; 14 thousand 105 in Aguascalientes, and 10 thousand 509 in San Luis Potosí.
In the south, 57,377 jobs were reported for refugee claimants: in Tabasco, 35,125; 13 thousand 596 in Chiapas and 8 thousand 656 in Veracruz.
