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US Govt ‘Should Feel Responsible’ for Spike in Asylum Claims at Southern Border

© AP Photo / Gregory BullUS Border Patrol agent
US Border Patrol agent - Sputnik International
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The number of migrants seeking asylum at the southern US border has jumped by 67 percent this year, according to data recently released by the US Customs and Border Protection.

The data reveals that 92,959 migrants filed for asylum during the 2018 fiscal year, which ended in September. This marks a 67 percent increase over the 55,584 claims filed during the 2017 fiscal year. 

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However, according to authorities, the increase could be even greater were there more space to hold people at US ports of entry.

"Migrants may have to need to stay and wait in Mexico until space opens up," an official at US Customs and Border Protection, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, recently told the Washington Times. "This number would be higher, again, if not for the facility and resource constraints at the ports of entry."

"These numbers reflect a dramatic increase in initial fear claims by those encountered on the border, which is straining border security, immigration enforcement, courts and other federal resources," Kevin K. McAleenan, Customs and Border Protection commissioner, told the New York Times.

The US Customs and Border Protection agency uses a process called "metering" to cap the number of people who can be processed for asylum each day. Officers usually process between 40 and 100 people daily, while thousands of migrants wait on the Mexican side of the border for their turn.

According to Juan Jose Gutierrez, national coordinator for the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition, the many driving factors behind the spike in asylum claims can be traced back to the policies of the US and other Western democracies toward Central America. 

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"I think that the first reason we're seeing this increase in human rights claims has to do with the history of right-wing-led, gross violations of Central American people's human rights, and of course, that was led, and has been led, for decades, by successive governments of the United States. So that's number one," Gutierrez told Sputnik Tuesday.

"Number two, in my view, is a lack of economic development, which translates into each of the Central American nations generating very few jobs for a growing population that enters the labor market without any prospects of finding any job opportunities… number three, I think, goes hand in hand with number two — you have foreign-led plunder of Central American nations' natural resources," Gutierrez added.

In addition, the wave of civil wars starting in the late 1970s and ‘80s in countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have politically destabilized those nations, resulting in widespread organized crime and violence.

"That's why you're seeing so many youngsters, underage children, coming accompanied or without their parents to the US in search of legal protection," Gutierrez noted.

"And then lastly, I would say that you have a situation where you have a whole host of very corrupt governments that are infamous for their graft, the taking of whatever little resources are pumped into Central American nations to help them with their economic development, to create economic opportunities for their populations," Gutierrez explained.

However, according to Gutierrez, although the number of asylum seekers has increased, it is still dwarfed by the number of people who were arriving in the US in past decades, and who were absorbed into US society and economy.

"There used to be a time when nearly 2 million people actually came to America without documents," Gutierrez told Sputnik, although he didn't provide a time frame for that statistic. "So 55,000, 100,000, people is not a whole lot of people considering the history of migration from the South to the United States. It's not a drop in the bucket, but it's certainly a lot less people coming to America today than used to be the case." 

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In November, US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation that would prevent immigrants from qualifying for asylum if they entered the US illegally. The proclamation was signed as around 7,000 Central American migrants, according to US estimates, were moving toward the US southern border in a bid to obtain asylum.

"What I think is happening is that the United States, its new government, the Donald Trump administration, has adopted more restrictive immigration policies for political gain. We saw it back in 2015, when on the very day that he announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for president of the United States, he went after, in a very racist way, Mexicans, because in his mind, all Latin Americans are Mexicans. They all look the same. We're all rapists and criminals and so on, the worst scum of the Earth. And he hasn't let up!" Gutierrez told Sputnik.

"So he's going to continue with that rhetoric and demagoguery, and he's trying to persuade the American people — with less success each time — that the United States is being invaded by this horde of savages from the south. So if there's anyone that should feel responsible, and is in fact responsible for this manufactured human crisis that the United States and Donald Trump are trying to advertise as an invasion, it's the United States government itself," Gutierrez added.

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