On the border with Mexico, several municipalities in Texas and Arizona, expecting a chaotic situation, have declared states of emergency… Two thousand more soldiers have been dispatched from Washington to support around 24,000 security officers. Immigration Service mobilized. But the task is a Herculean task, while tens of thousands of visa-free migrants, mainly from Central and South America, but also from China, Russia and Haiti, jostle at the border.
“It is an extremely complicated crisis and it is global. Look at Europe, you have the same thing,” notes Maria Blacque-Belair, director of RIF, a New York-based organization that supports asylum seekers. The situation reminds me of a boiling lid on the pot. We should be able to go beyond ideologies, but everything is blocked, starting with Congress…”
A new device is urgently being developed
“Millions of people from Latin America are leaving their homes, the New York Times alarmed in an article that caused a stir here, in a number not seen in decades, and are making their way to the United States.”
The Covid pandemic, a severe economic recession, political repression in several countries, violence by armed groups and gangs, the inflation of basic necessities caused by the conflict in Ukraine, all this has a “perfect storm” (literally: a perfect storm) created storm, state of crisis) in the south of the USA, observe the specialists. In addition, false information about a possible amnesty, spread by networks of smugglers and human traffickers, has been circulating on social networks for weeks, fueling the crisis.
Within three years, Title 42, a 19th-century measure due to be lifted at midnight this Thursday, May 11, had allowed the United States to welcome 2.8 million migrants, mostly men, some more than to be rejected once. As the pandemic has sharply declined, the government is urgently trying to set up a new migration system, the outline of which is still unclear. Objective: Restoring legal immigration channels. Apparently, deportees are accepted at the border and their case is dealt with by the courts, a process that can take years.
A heated political debate
Images of crowds of migrants crowding the border, of entire families crossing the Rio Grande, have swept across the American media, and the debate over illegal immigration has reached a fever pitch in recent days. Republicans, led by ex-President Donald Trump, are shooting red bullets at President Joe Biden, who is accused of incompetence and weakness. You know that immigration is a thorny, if not impossible, issue for the White House right now.
But the Democrats are also divided. More than 3,000 km north of the border, New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, accused the White House of turning its back on his city. Just like in Chicago, Philadelphia or even Denver, the metropolis’ reception systems are already overwhelmed with the arrival of migrants. Two days ago, the mayor asked the communities in the remote suburbs to accept the reception of migrants. He came to an end to the inadmissibility and took legal action. And with the expected influx of migrants, New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency.