The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, expressed the commitment of the Joe Biden government to immigration reform. However, through a “virtual trip”, he insisted that the southern border of his country is “closed to irregular immigration.” The new Administration has been undoing the Trump-era immigration policies, which closed asylum routes, but continues to want to deter new arrivals to the country until the legal migration system is overhauled.
“To anyone thinking of making the journey to the United States, our message is not to.” The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, could not be clearer. He urged Central Americans without travel documents on Friday not to undertake risky trips to the United States: “The border is closed to irregular migration,” he said.
Although a new process will gradually allow thousands of asylum seekers to await court decisions within the United States, the chief of diplomacy discouraged migrants from heading north.
Blinken made this statement this Friday, in the framework of a series of videoconferences with different Mexican authorities, in what the State Department has described as a “virtual trip” to Canada and Mexico. With the latter country, the United States shares a 3,200-kilometer border and both nations seek to reinvent their relations with the arrival of the Democratic government.
“Welcome to Mexico”
During the “visit”, Blinken met virtually with his Mexican counterpart, Marcelo Ebrard, with the head of the Economy of Mexico, Tatiana Clouthier, and also with different border authorities, such as the mayor of El Paso or the mayor of Ciudad Juárez.
“Welcome to Mexico,” said Marcelo Ebrard, at the start of Blinken’s “virtual tour”. He replied: “I wanted to ‘visit’ Mexico in the first place to demonstrate the importance that President Biden attaches to the relationship between our countries.”
What stood out from these early approaches was that changes will take time. “President Biden is committed to reforming our immigration system and ensuring safe, orderly, and humane processing at our border. Those issues will take time,” Blinken stressed.
And indeed, Biden’s new strategy on immigration from the region will not be implemented in a day. His will is to work with the governments of Mexico and Central America to solve “the heartbreaking reasons why there are people risking their lives and their security to enter the United States at any cost,” said the US official.
A new chapter in the US-Mexico bilateral relationship.
The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has celebrated the new step in this reform promised by the White House. “We recognize the initiatives of President Biden, who has taken many initiatives that we see with very good eyes in Mexico, with a lot of empathy in recognition of the Mexican community,” said Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
The Joe Biden Administration has marked a turn in the immigration policy of the North American nation, after four years of cutting legal entries and a radical discourse towards irregular ones.
But in recent weeks, the number of apprehensions at the border has skyrocketed as Central Americans flee a humanitarian crisis from devastating hurricanes and the coronavirus pandemic. The number of hungry people in Central America has almost quadrupled in the last two years.
Biden’s first steps to humanize migration
In this context, the new tenant of the White House has already taken some immediate measures. Biden has, for example, ordered this week to resume the issuance of permanent residency cards that Trump suspended during the pandemic. He has also presented in Congress a reform proposal that contemplates the regularization of the 11 million undocumented foreigners who are estimated to live in the United States.
In addition, it began to dismantle the Trump program according to which thousands of Central Americans and other asylum seekers had to wait for the review of their asylum applications in Mexico.
So this week, the first asylum seekers from a Mexican border camp that had become a symbol of Trump-era immigration restrictions entered the United States on Thursday.
A group of 27 people who lived in the refugee camp in Matamoros, in Tamaulipas, one of the most violent states in Mexico, was relocated to Texas to continue their legal process. Some have been living in that camp for more than a year.
They signal to the Biden Government of wanting to reopen a center for minor immigrants
In another facet of immigration reform, politicians and activists on Thursday expressed their displeasure at the alleged reopening of a detention center in Florida for minor immigrants who are not accompanied by adults.
“It is unfortunate that we have to hold this press conference today, because the Biden Administration is planning to reopen a detention center for children. Let us not forget that this detention center was closed in 2019 for various reasons, it is not a safe place for children. “said Mariana Martínez, of the American Friends Service Committee.
The shelter housed more than 3,000 undocumented minors until it closed in August 2019 after reports of child abuse. However, on Tuesday, the local newspaper ‘Miami Herald’ reported, citing anonymous sources from the Department of Security, that the government of the new Democratic president plans to reopen this center.
Questioned on the subject, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, declared that the Government “will not expel unaccompanied children at the border, that would be inhumane,” she said, and said that due to the pandemic, they need to find places where minors are safe while they are transferred to relatives or representatives.
With EFE, Reuters and AFP
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source https://pledgetimes.com/the-us-government-reiterates-that-the-border-is-closed-to-irregular-migration/
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