While the media is focusse on the US deportations of refugees and immigrants and the detention of children, Mexico is already deporting more Central Americans than the US.
Further, between 2016 and 2017, nearly 60,000 Central American children were detained here in migration prisons (officially dubbed “stations”).
The US and Mexico are cooperating in patrolling Mexico’s southern border, implementing a security plan that has seen 85% of immigrants deported without any solid revision of their case. The US has designated well over US$100 million to be used on the Mexican-Guatemalan border, with former US president Barack Obama having allocated some US$2.3 – $3.5 billion annually to Plan Merida (an agreement between Mexico, Central American countries, and the US, to supposedly counter drug trafficking, crime, and money laundering in the region). These funds have gone towards spy technology, intelligence gathering, 24 Blackhawk helicopters, 2,200 Humvee vehicles, and more.
Central American migrants being forced to walk for weeks in order to avoid border officials and gangs who regularly abuse migrants.
The 80 or more safe-haven refuges around Mexico are nowhere near enough to provide shelter and rest for them during their journeys.
Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Lopez Obrador (known by his initials as AMLO) has made it clear that when he swears in on December 1, Mexico will continue to collaborate with the US to guard its southern borders and being the US’s accomplice in filtering out Central Americans seeking refuge or work in the US.
In southern Mexico, security officials patrol the roads, check cars and buses, and conduct operations in bars, parks and squares where migrants are known to hang out. Records of abuse conducted by such officials are obviously slim, but the country’s Human Rights commission, in 2009 noted 9,758 kidnappings of migrants in a space of five months, and migrants themselves have described disappearances, clandestine graves, beatings, and mass kidnappings. Seventy percent of women passing through Mexico are raped or sexually abused.
The massive wealth and living standards disparities between rich countries like the US and poorer countries like Mexico are rooted in centuries of ongoing economic exploitation. Putting the differences in the cost of living aside, a Mexican in the bottom 10% here earns in a year what some people earn in the US in a day or two ($667.95). Not everyone has trouble getting into Mexico. People from the US, for example, can enter the country for six months on a tourist visa applied for when entering the country.
Beyond protecting the human rights of those forced to travel overland, it has been proven over and again that open borders are better for all parties: for the receiving countries, the countries people are leaving, and of course, for the migrants themselves. Further, a rigorous Danish study conducted over 17 years found that borders open to large influxes of refugees tend to see an increase in low-skilled wages and employment for residents of the receiving country. Economist Michael Clemens also calculated that opening the world’s borders would double global GDP. Allowing workers to move where global and regional economies need them increases their productivity, and also sees workers sending money back to their country of origin as remittances in quantities that are much higher than the tokenistic, patronizing, and controlling “aid” rich countries send.
Putting up obstacles to that only makes things harder for them. In Mexico, immigrants who stay without formal permission can’t legally work or exercise other rights, and they become part of a super-exploited class. Like getting an abortion, people who need to migrate, will.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/18/why-mexicos-next-president-is-no-friend-of-migrants/
Further, between 2016 and 2017, nearly 60,000 Central American children were detained here in migration prisons (officially dubbed “stations”).
The US and Mexico are cooperating in patrolling Mexico’s southern border, implementing a security plan that has seen 85% of immigrants deported without any solid revision of their case. The US has designated well over US$100 million to be used on the Mexican-Guatemalan border, with former US president Barack Obama having allocated some US$2.3 – $3.5 billion annually to Plan Merida (an agreement between Mexico, Central American countries, and the US, to supposedly counter drug trafficking, crime, and money laundering in the region). These funds have gone towards spy technology, intelligence gathering, 24 Blackhawk helicopters, 2,200 Humvee vehicles, and more.
Central American migrants being forced to walk for weeks in order to avoid border officials and gangs who regularly abuse migrants.
The 80 or more safe-haven refuges around Mexico are nowhere near enough to provide shelter and rest for them during their journeys.
Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Lopez Obrador (known by his initials as AMLO) has made it clear that when he swears in on December 1, Mexico will continue to collaborate with the US to guard its southern borders and being the US’s accomplice in filtering out Central Americans seeking refuge or work in the US.
In southern Mexico, security officials patrol the roads, check cars and buses, and conduct operations in bars, parks and squares where migrants are known to hang out. Records of abuse conducted by such officials are obviously slim, but the country’s Human Rights commission, in 2009 noted 9,758 kidnappings of migrants in a space of five months, and migrants themselves have described disappearances, clandestine graves, beatings, and mass kidnappings. Seventy percent of women passing through Mexico are raped or sexually abused.
The massive wealth and living standards disparities between rich countries like the US and poorer countries like Mexico are rooted in centuries of ongoing economic exploitation. Putting the differences in the cost of living aside, a Mexican in the bottom 10% here earns in a year what some people earn in the US in a day or two ($667.95). Not everyone has trouble getting into Mexico. People from the US, for example, can enter the country for six months on a tourist visa applied for when entering the country.
Beyond protecting the human rights of those forced to travel overland, it has been proven over and again that open borders are better for all parties: for the receiving countries, the countries people are leaving, and of course, for the migrants themselves. Further, a rigorous Danish study conducted over 17 years found that borders open to large influxes of refugees tend to see an increase in low-skilled wages and employment for residents of the receiving country. Economist Michael Clemens also calculated that opening the world’s borders would double global GDP. Allowing workers to move where global and regional economies need them increases their productivity, and also sees workers sending money back to their country of origin as remittances in quantities that are much higher than the tokenistic, patronizing, and controlling “aid” rich countries send.
Putting up obstacles to that only makes things harder for them. In Mexico, immigrants who stay without formal permission can’t legally work or exercise other rights, and they become part of a super-exploited class. Like getting an abortion, people who need to migrate, will.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/18/why-mexicos-next-president-is-no-friend-of-migrants/
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