A bottleneck in Mexico

Nogales, Mexico

From the New York Times

While the Mexican government has made improvements to its asylum program in recent years and has awarded protection at increasingly higher rates, the system remains deeply flawed, leaving many migrants vulnerable to harm, according to at least seven reports published in recent weeks by American, Mexican, Central American and international groups focused on human rights and migration.

The weaknesses include inadequate staffing in Mexico’s refugee agency, leading to months long waits for applicants; uneven training and supervision of immigration agents; and inconsistent adjudication of asylum law, according to the reports.

Many who might qualify for asylum have been unable to begin the process because government officials have not taken the steps needed to allow them to apply, the groups contend. In some cases, border agents have actively discouraged migrants from applying for asylum, threatening them with long detention in Mexico while their petitions are being considered, advocates say.

While Mexico is a rather large country in terms of geography and population, its political, economic, and social insecurity make me worry about its capacity to manage the simultaneous consequences of large numbers of people deported from its northern neighbor and the continued flow of refugees from its southern neighbors.

Let's just say that we are far from pursuing policies I had advocated three years ago when the "unaccompanied minors crisis" erupted.

Over the next several decades, the US and Central America, as well as Mexico, should facilitate the freer movement of people across our borders. The US has free trade agreements with Central America and Mexico, but there are no provisions for the free movement of labour. Some have questioned the agreements' contributions to the current crisis but I lean towards deepening them and ensuring that their implementation does not undermine other poverty reduction efforts such as this recent US-El Salvador agreement.

Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans working in the US already return remittances in the billions of dollars, contributing 15-20 percent of each country's GDP. There is demand in the US for lower-cost labour that Central Americans provide. In the short-term, the US should increase the number of Central American work visas and there should be a push to providing people greater freedom to move and work in the region.

More than four million people of Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran descent live in the US and an estimated 30 million in the Northern Triangle. We need to think long-term about policies that will make it safer and cheaper for Central Americans to move between their countries and the US, not more difficult.

Finally, the United States needs to seriously engage its neighbours in a discussion about the drug industry devastating the region. It is hard to see how conditions in Central America will improve drastically if we do not make significant changes to current drug policy. We can build on current efforts to legalise the recreational use of marijuana in the US and to further a discussion which views illicit drug abuse as a health issue.

The problems in Central America are immense. We need to consider deepening our already close economic relations, craft policies that facilitate migration between the US and the region, jointly invest billions of dollars in development projects, and enact drug policy reforms. I am afraid reforms short of these will probably just help at the margins.