The Central American caravan has reached Tijuana. Now what?
The caravan of over six thousand migrants from Central America has reached Tijuana, the last city in the Mexico before the United States border. But the members have to decide if they want to press into the United States, their destination, stay in Mexico, or go home.
Hi everyone, this Jeff, JR is the producer, and you are listening to episode 107 of Plain English, on Thursday, November 29, 2018. Thanks for being with us. Remember to check out the episode transcripts at PlainEnglish.com/107.
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Central American migrants reach Tijuana, but now what?
The first wave of the caravans of thousands of migrants from Honduras and El Salvador has reached the Mexican border city of Tijuana. They have almost reached their destination, the US border, but their future is uncertain. The US border is heavily guarded and you need a visa to cross it. The migrants are fleeing violence and extortion in their home countries. It’s common to hear stories of business owners who are forced to turn over half of their profits to gangs in the area, under threats of violence. They found each other on Facebook and through word-of-mouth, and many left the same day they heard the caravan was passing through their town. Their destination was the United States.
Some of the people in the caravan were hoping that by arriving en masse at the US border, the American position on offering asylum would change. US President Donald Trump has said he would not accept a large inflow of migrants, but the caravan continued anyway. Now that they have reached Tijuana, they’ve found that the US border patrol has sent additional officers to guard the border.
That means that the people seeking asylum arrived in a group, but they need to proceed one by one. Each individual has to have one-on-one meetings with asylum officers at the US border. There are only about 100 appointments available in a day; there are already thousands of people on waiting lists for appointments. Even though the US is sending additional agents to the area, it’s still estimated to take six months or longer just to process initial asylum claims from the people already in Tijuana.
Meanwhile, Tijuana’s resources are being taxed. They are now faced with housing and feeding thousands of unexpected people with little more than the clothes on their backs. The first wave of people included about three thousand people, while about the same number were making their way from smaller towns nearby. Most are arriving at a single community center, where the city set up a shelter at a sports center. The migrants are being given some supplies donated by volunteer and church groups—but basics like toilet paper, diapers and basic medicines are in short supply. Mexico’s federal government is changing over on December 1, and there has not been a coordinated, centralized response. So Tijuana as a city has been left with few resources to handle the influx of new migrants.
Some of Tijuana’s 1.3 million people are nervous about the caravan’s potential effect on their city. They saw stories of confrontation at the Mexico-Guatemala border and the recent arrests of about 60 people in Tijuana itself. Tijuana is popular among immigrants in general. The city welcomed thousands of people from Haiti in 2016 and 2017, for example. But this is a lot more people, and they’ve arrived all at once. The mayor of Tijuana, Juan Manuel Gastelum, said that the situation is a humanitarian crisis and has sharply criticized the Mexican national government for failing to deal with the problem.
He has a point. Dealing with immigration and asylum and international relations is the job of a national government. The migrant caravan passed through many towns and cities in Mexico along the way, but as a border town, Tijuana will have to bear the burden of settling the thousands of people, for potentially months at a time. That is beyond the resources of any one city. Think about it: The whole United States is wary of admitting thousands of people all at once; Tijuana has to do it as just one city.
The US and Mexican governments appear to have reached an agreement on how to deal with the problem. Members of incoming president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration have been working with the US government on the deal called Remain in Mexico. Under the current agreements on asylum, the migrants would be eligible to apply for asylum in the United States and then stay in the United States while their claims are being processed. But under the new agreement, migrants would stay in Mexico and would be encouraged to work while their asylum cases are processed in American courts.
You might wonder why Mexico would agree to a plan like this. There are several benefits to Mexico. First, business groups say there are 100,000 jobs available around the country for Central American migrants if they want them. Many thousands of those are in the assembly plants around Tijuana. Another more hard-nosed reason is that Mexico probably understands that the United States is not going to allow thousands of people to cross the US border at a time, and Mexico doesn’t want to become just a waiting room of stranded migrants with nothing to do. That situation would put strain on any city and could lead to violence and instability. Instead of dealing with that, Mexico would rather try to integrate the migrants into society. They are also probably keeping an eye on the future. A large part of the migrants’ motivation is the ability to settle in the United States. If they see that they would have to stay and work in Mexico, where wages are a lot lower, fewer might make the journey.
The incoming Mexican president, AMLO, has said that the long-term solution is that people don’t have to leave their countries and go to Mexico or the United States. He has proposed a program of aid and economic development for Central American countries.
It’s a tough situation.
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