In 2016, Mexicali experienced a migration crisis from people over Haiti. They fled out of their country because of the severe conditions in which they lived and came to Mexicali with hopes of being accepted in the United States based on The United States Refugee Act of 1980. The act stated that The Federal Refugee Resettlement Program must provide assistance, such as the acceptance of refugees in shelters in the U.S., (economically too) to all refugees after being inside the U.S. Late in 2018 and early in 2019, Mexicali experience another refugee caravan, but this time people came from Honduras.
The story of every Honduran varied. Several of them came because of the gang problems that they were facing and the unfair treatment they were getting in their own country. Other came because of their economic and health situations, and just as the Haitians, they were seeking help from the U.S. Government. Where am I getting with all this Information? Let me start by saying that in order for a person to be considered a refugee, he/she must be able to demonstrate that he/she is being persecuted or that his country is being under attack of another country. The United States designed this program to obtain order among all of the refugees coming inside the country and to investigate which kind of people are they letting inside.
My point here is, that surely the laws that examine these people are strongly enforced by the government but the process within the facilities (shelters, asylums,refugee camps) isn’t efficient as it should be. There have been months since the refugees from Honduras have been seeking asylum in the United States and according to Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maya Averbuch, publishers of The New York Times, in the article “Waiting for Asylum in the United States, Migrants Live in Fear in Mexico”, they stated “Stories of fleeing violence, extortion, and corruption in their home countries do not meet the new standard for entry. Many migrants are also unable to obtain lawyers to represent them in court without first meeting them in the United States.” Both of the authors argued that besides the delay of the trials, there have been situations where people who have been heard by Judges, aren’t meeting the judges' expectations of "unfair treatment" or "persecution", and if the Judge doesn't see that, the person can not be considered a refugee, therefore the United States Refugee Act of 1980 can't apply to them.
Later in the same article, according to the lawyer Jacqueline Brown Scott, her plaintiff named Howard Doe (for his protection), was sent to the immigration court in San Diego and then stated the next: “I told them everything but they didn’t seem to care” say Howard after speaking to the jury and the Judge. His story was no different from the other people, Mr. Doe stated that he had escaped from a cartel in Honduras, but within days of being in Mexico, he was kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and it was not after 15 days that he could escape, then he went to seek asylum in the United States. However, he was sent back to Mexico after the court decided his evidence wasn't enough to prove he was in need of refuge here in the United States.
My concerns are, Why isn’t the United States investing more time inside and outside refugees camps, shelters and asylums? Why is the president of the United States more concern in building a border in which cost overpassed the millions of dollars? I would say that the reason why more and more people are entering illegally the United States, it’s because the process in which the immigrants and refugees are receiving isn't helpful. They aren't well organized nor supervised by enough experts who actually care about the people.
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