All President Trump is doing is enforcing federal law as passed by the duly elected Legislative branch, signed into law by duly elected previous presidents. And, shockingly, the people streaming to the U.S. find that they can, in fact, go elsewhere. They just won’t be given everything free like here
As Trump tightens the U.S. border, asylum applicants seek refuge in Mexico, elsewhere
The idea was to reach the United States. But when the young Honduran mother arrived in Mexico this summer, with only a handful of pesos and a 4-year-old in tow, she realized how difficult that had become.
And so she came up with a new plan.
“The American Dream is costly, very costly,†lamented Iris, 32, sitting on a curb outside the Mexican refugee office in this southern city. She spoke on the condition that only her first name be used, for fear of harm from gang members in Honduras.
“That’s still the dream. But if they give me Mexican papers, I’ll stay here.â€
Iris is one in the soaring number of migrants seeking refuge throughout the Americas. And while the United States remains the world’s top recipient of asylum petitions, countries such as Mexico, with much smaller asylum systems, are seeing far greater increases.
Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize are all seeing massive increases. Of course, this doesn’t mean they are being granted asylum.
The surge of asylum seekers in the hemisphere stems from a cascade of crises: the implosion of Venezuela, a crackdown on dissidents by the authoritarian government of Nicaragua, and agricultural disasters and gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. (snip)
“We already have more than enough†migrants, Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo, said last month after meeting with Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security.
A lot to Panama are Venezuelans. Isn’t socialism great?
The Mexican city of Tapachula, around 10 miles from the Guatemalan border, offers a glimpse of the drastic change in migrant flows. By 7 o’clock one recent morning, scores of Central Americans, Haitians and West Africans had lined up outside a low-slung, unmarked building. It was the office of the Mexican refugee commission, known by its Spanish initials, COMAR. Around two-thirds of the country’s asylum applications are processed here.
So…..not all from Central America?
The Trump administration says many asylum applications are bogus, filed by poor, job-seeking migrants who invent stories of persecution to improve their chances of being accepted. Officials say legitimate asylum seekers should seek refuÂge in the first country they are safe — not travel thousands of miles farther to the United States.
“The asylum program is a scam,â€Â Trump said in April.
Um, it is. A lot are just looking for free stuff, as promised by Democrats. And they want to jump the line of those who are doing it the right way.
