Haitian asylum seeker Jocelyn Jean-Philippe, his two-year-old, and his wife, who is four months pregnant with her second child, entered the United States legally from Mexico. “If my son's born there (the US), it's better for me and him,” Jocelyn said before crossing from Reynosa in northern Mexico to McAllen, Texas. “I want a stable life,” said his wife Berline, 25. “I want a better life for him. I suffered a lot,” she said.
The couple’s dream is also the dream of many migrants from Central Africa, who accept to embark on the arduous journey in the hope to enter “the promised land” despite risks.
In 2021, Mexican authorities detected nearly 60,000 unaccompanied minors from the “Northern Triangle” region - Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala - at the border between Mexico and the US while trying to cross. This is the highest number recorded over the past 10 years.
Food insecurity is a ‘serious disease’ in Latin America. It has been further aggravated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has revealed inadequacies in the region's health care system, which is ill-equipped to respond to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Latin America's GDP in 2020 fell 7.7% before recovering to 3.7% growth in 2021. The disruption of in-person learning has affected 167 million students at all educational levels.
According to the Mexican Secretariat for Home Affairs, one factor that has contributed to the increase in youth migration is the pandemic, which has had a major impact on the labour market. Due to the prolonged blockade, workers cannot sell goods or provide services, nor enjoy social security services. Violence in several Central American countries and the landfall of two hurricanes in late 2020, Eta and Iota, also affected 3.5 million children.
As Latin America and the Caribbean region are still struggling to overcome the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict will further worsen the regional food insecurity. From December 2021 to March 2022, the number of severely food-insecure people increased by more than half a million.
In the US, the border security issue is always a political headache for presidents, and it often becomes the main content of presidential campaign platforms. Senate Democrats have called on President Joe Biden’s administration to end the use of Title 42 which allows the expulsion of migrants at the border.
Many US congressmen emphasised that Title 42 has threatened the lives of vulnerable people and enriched traffickers. However, on May 20, a federal judge in Louisiana on May 20 prevented the Biden administration from reopening the borders to migrants and asylum seekers, a position backed by 24 states pressing concerns about the costs of illegal immigration and the spread of the coronavirus. More than 1.7 million migrants have been expelled under Title 42 since the order began.
Amid controversy over US immigration policy, the influx of migrants reflects the urgent need to improve living conditions in originating countries. US Vice President Kamala Harris affirmed that the first thing to do is to help neighbouring countries deal with the problems they are facing. This is a comprehensive and sustainable approach, but it also requires a lot of effort from the international community to solve the migration problem in the region.
