▲ The mother and grandmother of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, a young man who was 16 years old when he was killed by a United States border agent in 2012, led a protest in Nogales, Sonora, to demand punishment of the person responsible, 10 years after what happened .Photo Afp
Clara Zepeda
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, October 11, 2022, p. eleven
After the health crisis, but in the midst of the war between Russia and Ukraine, net migration to countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) grew again in 2021, registering 4.2 million people, an increase of 25.2 percent.
Mexico received 67,700 long-term or permanent migrants that year, 24.9 percent more than in 2020, the agency estimated in its study International Migration Perspectives 2022.
The document reports that last year there was a significant increase in the volume of permanent residents in Mexico from other countries, compared to that registered in four previous years. There was also an exponential increase in the number of children and adolescents in an irregular migratory situation, possibly as a result of the reforms in favor of migrant children and adolescents, who request asylum and refuge.
The OECD highlighted that in 2021 the number of first asylum seekers increased by 220 percent, reaching 130 thousand. The majority came from Haiti, with 52 thousand; Honduras, 36,000, and Cuba, 8,300. The largest increase since 2020 was Haitians, with 46,000. Of the 58 thousand determinations in 2021, 48 percent were positive.
Mexico’s migration policy aims to guarantee safe, orderly and regular migration with full respect for the human rights of migrants or those in human mobility. Although Mexico has collaborated with the United States to prevent migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras from reaching the US border, they have been defending their rights and adopting a humanitarian approach to economic development to address the structural causes of migration.
highlighted the agency.
Of the OECD countries, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico are the only ones that had fewer petitioning citizens in 2021 than in 2020. On the other hand, the largest increase in new petitions was observed in Mexicans.
Employment for migrants
On the other hand, although the employment rate in the United States for migrants increased between 2020 and 2021, regardless of the region of birth, no group has managed to recover the level seen before the covid-19 crisis.
In particular, despite a significant increase in their employment rate and a significant decrease in their unemployment rate during 2021, the situation of migrants from Mexico and other countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean has significantly deteriorated compared to with 2019.
Only the employment rate in Mexico went from 71 percent in 2019 to 68.3 during 2021. The unemployment rate was 3.5 in 2019 and a year later it reached 5.3 percent.
