Migrants in Mexico Hope for Joe Biden Win

Migrants and human rights activists protest against US and Mexican migration policies at t
GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images
Neil Munro

Migrants stuck in Mexico are hoping Joe Biden will get elected and open the border for them and their relatives to get into the United States, according to multiple reports.

“Biden’s proposals are very encouraging,” Salvadoran asylum seeker Gustavo told Reuters for an October 19 report that added:

He said he had been assaulted while waiting in Tijuana with his wife, two children, and sister-in-law for a year and a half. He hoped that he and his family would soon get to enter the United States, whether through a Supreme Court ruling or a Biden victory.

“Asylum-seekers stranded in Matamoros, Mexico, have a plea for voters in November: Elect Joe Biden and “get us out of this hell,” said an October 20 report from The New Republic.

According to the magazine, one Honduran migrant, Luis Adrian Martinez Reyes, “said there’s no joy in the camp. He described the upcoming election as ‘the best hope’ he has. ‘Here we are all asking God for Biden to win.’  … He still asks God for Biden to win. And American voters: ‘Get us out of this hell.’”

KERANews.org in North Texas reported:

For now, Cesar and Carolina, the Nicaraguan couple living at Pan de Vida migrant shelter, are closely following the presidential race. “Our hope is that there will be some change that benefits all of us here,” Carolina said. She believes that if President Trump is reelected, there is almost no chance her family will be allowed to enter the country or gain asylum.

The migrants are waiting in Mexico because they were not allowed to file for asylum during the coronavirus crash, or because they were sent back to Mexico — pending their courtroom hearings — under Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program.

Most of the migrants are acting rationally. Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. government quietly opened the border in 2011 to migrants, so allowing more than two million poor migrants to get into the U.S. workplaces and apartments. Few of the arrivals were legal immigrants — but many were temporarily legal migrants, giving them the opportunity to plead for asylum and then evade deportation once they were denied asylum.

Each new arrival also summons more migrants via cell phone-relayed images of wealth and security, creating a huge chain migration of uneducated workers, neighbors, and families. Surveys show that many millions of poor Latin Americans want to migrate to the United States, alongside many additional millions of South America, Africans, and Indians.

Once in the United States, most of the unskilled migrants work hard to repay their coyote debts and accept the welfare and aid offered to them by eager government agencies and by progressives.

Obama’s huge supply of new labor and of welfare-aided consumers benefited employers and merchants with more profits and more consumers. The flow of migrants boosted immigration lawyers and the white-collar progressive activists who are hired to help them.

Obama’s wave helped suppress Americans’ wages and boost their apartment rents throughout the United States. In response, many millions of Americans — including a lopsided majority of American Latinos — want sharp curbs on migration.

Trump has largely shut down the Latin American migration after many legal and regulatory battles. For example, 400,000 migrants got through the border because of the “catch-and-release” rules in 2019 — but only 14,000 got through in 2020, say border agencies officials.

If elected, Biden will likely let many migrants over the border, many of whom will join their relatives who are now illegally working and hiding from immigration agencies.

Biden’s 2020 plan promises to “Reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees,” kill Trump’s MPP program, let companies import more visa workers, and let mayors import temporary workers. He also wants to accelerate the inflow of chain migration migrants, end migration enforcement against illegal aliens unless they commit a felony, and dramatically accelerate the inflow of poor refugees to at least 125,000 per year.

In contrast, Trump is likely to reject migrants, narrow asylum claims yet further, and fund the transfer of migrants in Mexico back to Latin American countries. His 2020 plan offers broadly popular — but quite limited — pro-American restrictions on migration and visa workers. For example, in many speeches, in general, Trump ignores the economic impact of blue-collar and white-collar migration on Americans while stressing issues of crime, outsiders, diseases, or welfare, even though his low-immigration policies have been a popular boon to Americans.

The Latin American migrants are usually fleeing poverty or violence in the hope of reaching the peace and economic security of the United States, where they can work and deliver their kids into American life. Most of the migrants have stories of persecution, but even good evidence of criminal threats does not meet the bar for getting asylum.

The trip is expensive because Mexico’s criminal cartels levy hull tolls for crossing the border. Many of the migrants are very poor and are being funded by relatives living and working illegally in the United States. But many migrants have funds from mortgaging their families’ properties, or from savings earned by small businesses, or from former jobs as nurses and cops.

The flow of migrants includes a small but increasing flow from the vast populations of India and Africa.

The migrants who get to the U.S. border are met by well-funded networks of American elite-left progressives who provide them with encouragement, supplies, political support, and legal scripts that might get them through federal asylum courts. AzCentral.com reported September 21:

A group of about 90 people gathered Monday morning on both sides of the border fence just west of the DeConcini port of entry in the twin border cities of Ambos Nogales. They spoke about the uncertainty migrants face, as well as the risks associated with a global pandemic and safety dangers in Mexico.

The group on the Mexican side, approximately 70 people, consisted mainly of migrants from Mexico and Latin America who have sought or are planning to seek asylum in the U.S. Their plans came to a halt in March when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security implemented restrictions that indefinitely suspended the processing of asylum-seekers.

…

Monday’s protest is part of a monthly series of events the Kino Border Initiative and migrants have organized on the 21st of each month. They chose the date symbolically because that is when DHS has been extending its border restrictions month after month.

Multiple reports say the migrants would prefer to live illegally in the United States rather than to stay in Mexico. The New York Times reported October 23 from the ramshackle — but organized and supplied — camp in Matamoros, Mexico:

“Without papers is it still better to be in the U.S. rather than here? Yes, it’s a thousand times better,” said Lucia Gomez, from Guerrero, Mexico, as she picked up clothing and toys that had been scattered outside their tent by hurricane winds. “They might find you, detain you and deport you,” she said. “But if you manage to avoid them, you will be able to put food on the table.”

KERANews reported:

Asked what he will do if Trump is re-elected, the man paused and cleared his throat. “I’ll be straight with you,” he said. “The idea is to get to the United States, one way or another. There might come a day when I decide to try to cross illegally, because there’s no other way and because I’m not gonna stay here.”

But many migrants are going home in the face of Trump’s pro-American policies. The New Republic reported that “according to immigration lawyers who visited the camp, the number of people living there had shrunk from about 2,500 before the border closed to about 1,000, as people give up on asylum and return home, or find work and settle in Mexico.”

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