In a detailed article signed by Ana María Aragonés, she recalls that last week Biden announced a limited migration program for these four countries and the issuance of a total of 30,000 monthly visas, which will be distributed among them under certain mandatory conditions.
Among the latter, what stands out is that they have a sponsor in the United States with sufficient solvency to act as guarantor for the migrant, administration is done from their country, and they arrive by air with proper papers. Anyone who does it across the Mexican border will be turned away and sent back to that country.
On the other hand, according to the author, in 2023 and 2024 it will receive up to 20,000 refugees from other Latin American and Caribbean countries, and Mexico will receive up to 30,000 expelled migrants each month who would be turned back.
The United States will reinforce the borders, impose harsh and new consequences on those who dare to cross without documents.
The newspaper analyst points out that in this way the US government is trying to establish what it claims to be an “orderly, humanitarian and workable system”.
The first thing to note is that this is an interventionist proposal, since it interferes with Mexico’s internal politics and disrupts Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s original proposal on border failures, humanitarian and work visas, and most importantly: the causes of the phenomenon to investigate that is enforcing these forced resettlements.
Why should Mexico welcome migrants who have returned from the United States when it is a problem that needs to be solved in this country and does not offer them a false and perverse outlet for their needs? he asks himself and answers that the Depressurizing the border by moving For the people on the other side of the river, nothing will be solved, because the causes are still intact.
Aragonés writes that it is striking that Biden’s proposal is aimed at migrants from countries subject to unilateral trade sanctions, improper interference in destabilizing policies for governments that distance themselves from Washington’s interests.
As I have pointed out in other collaborations, he expresses that these are causes that provoke movements of populations whose need for survival forces them to leave their countries, and the United States is the direct cause of these conflicts and therefore responsible for their resolution, that is, lift sanctions.
It is understood that the proposal to remove all these obstacles touches the most sensitive fiber of the neighboring country’s government, since they are a clear expression of US geopolitics, whose strategy remains to dominate the region and its natural resources, he says.
The United States, like most developed countries, is experiencing serious demographic conflicts due to declining birth rates, pension cuts and insufficient migration due to the Donald Trump administration’s restrictive policies and years of closing borders to Covid-19.
The consequences are that “there is a structural lack of four million workers who are needed”.
So how to explain this immigration policy, which seems completely absurd when the US economy has been under-employed for two years? he asks again. My hypothesis, he replies, is that on the one hand an apocalyptic vision of a migration chaos caused by border closures is to be created; It is linked to human traffickers, whose globally dispersed networks raise expectations that are unfulfilled and abandoned at the border crossings.
We must not forget, he concludes, that all of this is taking place within the framework of a Latin American region that is implementing progressive models that are confronted at the same time with the advance of right-wing and far-right coup groups clearly demanding US intervention.
dr Ana María Aragonés Castañer, born in France, is currently a full-time professor at the Institute for Economic Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she has 35 years of uninterrupted academic work.
jha/lma