Mexico is rethinking its approach toward asylum seekers after the Biden administration unveiled a controversial new proposal to limit asylum eligibility in the United States.
Mexico’s refugee assistance agency, known as COMAR, launched a pilot program in southern Mexico on Monday to explore expediting asylum denials to those it deems likely to travel onward to the US.
The aim is to deter those migrants from accessing temporary documents issued by COMAR while their cases are being evaluated, which they might use to travel north – a common phenomenon, according to COMAR’s head Andrés Ramírez.
But after the Biden administration announced its proposed new asylum rules on Tuesday, COMAR plans to abandon the strategy and use what it learned from the pilot program to come up with a different solution, Ramírez said.
The US proposal – which has been panned by human rights advocates and immigration experts – largely bars migrants who have not taken a legal pathway and instead traveled through other countries on their way to the US southern border from applying for asylum in the US. It would take effect in May.
Among its proposed new conditions on eligibility for US asylum: being denied protection in a third country through which they traveled.
Ramírez now worries that accelerating asylum denials could actually increase Mexico’s attractiveness as a pit stop for those ultimately aiming to request asylum in the US.
“The new policy that was recently announced [by the United States] changes the whole thing. We need to rethink it,” Ramírez said.
Migrant numbers at the US-Mexico border have been on the rise since last year, with increasing numbers of people from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Colombia – many fleeing repressive government and stark economic pressures.
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