Foreign Affairs

Mexico Sees Massive Increase In Asylum Claims, Blames The US For Not Taking More Refugees

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Mexico blamed a record number of asylum applications in the country on the U.S. for not taking in more refugees, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Nearly 108,200 migrants have applied for refugee status in Mexico in the last 10 months, according to Andrés Alfonso Ramírez Silva, Mexico’s refugee office director, Bloomberg reported. During the same period in 2019, Mexico received a previous record high of around 70,300 applications.

An increase in asylum applications in Mexico “is partly due to the refusal by the U.S. government to open its asylum system,” Colegio de la Frontera Norte Population Studies Director Rodolfo Cruz Pineiro said, according to Bloomberg.

“Mexico’s government is forced to open its refugee system more,” Cruz Pineiro said, according to Bloomberg. “However, the budget allocated for these migrants is scarce.”

U.S. border officials encountered a record high of 1.7 million migrants at the border shared with Mexico from September 2020 through September, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Migrants traveled to the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including natural disasters, violence and economic decline in their home countries, Bloomberg reported.

Mexican officials received 81% more asylum applications in 2021 than from 2013 to 2018, according to Bloomberg. Most asylum seekers came from Haiti and Honduras, while others were mostly from Cuba, El Salvador and Venezuela.

Some of the new applicants are Brazilian and Chilean nationals whose parents are Haitians who moved to those countries before traveling to Mexico, Ramírez said, Bloomberg reported.