Trump victory spurs worry among migrants abroad
Trump victory spurs worry among migrants abroad, but it’s not expected to halt migration
Associated Press • November 8, 2024
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Donald Trump’s victory in the United States presidential election instantly changed calculations for millions of migrants or potential migrants across the globe.
But perhaps not in the way Trump imagined.
Trump has pledged to reduce immigration. But by narrowing the already limited legal pathways into the US migrants will just recalibrate their plans and resort in greater numbers to hiring smugglers, experts say.
In many cases that will mean turning to organized crime groups that increasingly profit from migrant smuggling.
Those potentially affected come from dozens of countries and many have already sold their homes and their possessions to fund the trip.
Venezuelans continue arriving at the US southern border in reduced, but still large numbers. Mexicans made up half of US Border Patrol arrests in September. Chinese come through Ecuador and make their way up through the Americas. Senegalese buy multi-stop flights to Nicaragua, then move north.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration estimates there are around 281 million international migrants in the world, or 3.6% of the global population. An increasing number of people will be displaced for political, economic and violence reasons, and more migrants will seek asylum, according to its annual report. It warns that when people cannot find regular pathways, they start looking for “irregular channels that are extremely hazardous.”
During Trump’s first administration, Mexican border cities were saturated with migrants. Cartels preyed on them, kidnapping them, extorting their families for ransoms and forcibly recruiting them into their ranks. There were hundreds of arrivals every day, as well as thousands who were made to wait out the potentially yearslong US asylum application process in Mexico.
And then there’s the specter of massive deportations. Trump made a similar threat before and didn’t deliver, but there’s real concern.
Deportations to countries like Cuba and Venezuela could be complicated by icy relations, though Venezuela’s Maduro issued a conciliatory message congratulating Trump Wednesday. Advocates in Haiti on Thursday demanded countries, including the US, halt deportations because of the country’s domestic crisis.
And no country stands to be more impacted than Mexico. There are some 11 million Mexicans living in the US, about 5 million of whom don’t have legal status. Mexicans sent home more than $63 billion in remittances last year, mostly from the United States. Mass deportations would shake the finances of millions of families and the Mexican economy would struggle to absorb them.
Migrant advocates and shelter directors in Mexico said they’ve heard of no government plans to deal with large numbers of deportees.
Mexican aid groups are “not in a position to receive that quantity of people and let’s be honest, it’s civil society that carries on its shoulders most of the humanitarian response toward those who are deported or in transit,” said Rafael Velásquez García, Mexico director for the International Rescue Committee.
Mexico needs to prepare itself for all manner of pressures coming from a Trump administration, said Carlos Pérez Ricart, a professor of international relations at Mexican public research center CIDE.
“What Mexico has to accept is that our country is going to be a holding country for migrants, whether they want it or not,” he said. “Trump is going to deport thousands, if not millions of people and he’s going to impede the flow of migrants.”
Trump calls migrants “animals!”
Joel
A Prophecy of Esau and Jacob 