Politics, Business & Culture in the Americas

Central American Migration to Mexico and U.S. Declines



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Mexico’s immigration commissioner announced yesterday that overall migration (based on figures around the unauthorized) from Central America bound for Mexico and the United States decreased by nearly 70 percent over the past five years. Commissioner Salvador Beltrán del Río of Mexico’s National Migration Institute (Instituto Nacional de Migración, or INM) came to this conclusion by comparing the number of detained, undocumented Central American migrants in 2005 versus that in 2010—433,000 versus 140,000. He observed that the downward trend has continued thus far in 2011.

Commissioner Beltrán pointed out that Central Americans crossing into Mexico face grave risks of violence, kidnapping and extortion due to the increased association of organized crime with migrant trafficking. The International Organization for Migration’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Michele Klein Solomon, has concurred, adding that Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, or CNDH) estimates the number of annual migrant kidnappings to be around 22,000. Between April 2011 and September 2011, CNDH has placed that figure at 11,333.

However, some in Mexico dispute INM’s methodology. Rodolfo Casillas, a professor at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, contends: “What’s dropping is the number of people detained by immigration agents, which is different from the Central American migration flow that goes through Mexico.”

Mexico’s government has taken action to address issues around the treatment of migrants. In May, President Felipe Calderón approved a new migration law that aims to better protect migrants through such measures as punishing migration authorities for any unlawful acts committed toward migrants.      

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