Mexico registered 123,187 applicants for refugee status during November

The Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) announced that during November at least 123,187 applicants for refugee status have been registered in Mexico; A figure that is already close to 130,000 processes, with which the Comar plans to close 2021.

Andrés Ramírez, head of the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees, added that the more than 123,000 processes represent 75.13% more than the total of applicants of the historical mark of 2019, in addition to tripling the number of last year.

During 2020, a total of 41,059 people in mobility requested refuge in Mexico, a reduction of 41.6% compared to the more than 70,406 applications registered in 2019. While from 2013 to date, more than 294,503 migrants have sought asylum in Mexico, of which only 63,290 have this international law recognized, that is, 21% of the processes.

The figures of the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees They are framed by the uncertainty that thousands of migrants stranded in the state of Chiapas currently face, this after the INM claimed in recent days to have reached an agreement with leaders to dissolve this migrant caravan that left on November 18 past of Tapachula, Chiapas.

However, social organizations have denounced that given the misinformation about the alleged procedures by the INM, to transfer to the states, between 3,000 and 4,000 people, to regularize their applications for refuge and immigration regularization, “has resulted in a lot of uncertainty among people since the information available on these procedures is unclear and confusing.”

The INM announced that among the commitments that were accepted to suspend the caravan, are the transfer of migrants to entities such as Puebla, Querétaro, Hidalgo, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Guerrero, Colima, Jalisco and Guanajuato, where the INM will issue them a Visiting Card for Humanitarian Reasons.

However the Collective for the Observation and Monitoring of Human Rights in the Mexican Southeast (COMDHSM), warned that the call for regularization of the INM is “discretionary”, since people do not know who applies to these processes, when they will transfer them, or where, in addition to the misinformation about the transfer of procedures to others states caused people to decide to vacate their accommodation spaces, becoming homeless.

In addition to a few weeks ago the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) suspended care at its Refugee Care Center, so the closure of humanitarian assistance spaces exacerbates the precarious living conditions in which people find themselves awaiting the resolution of their asylum and immigration regularization processes.

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