Mexican nationals have become the fourth with the highest number of people seeking asylum in the United States, in the midst of an unprecedented immigration crisis that has saturated the immigration courts of that country.
According to a report by the US Congressional Research Service on the asylum process in immigration courts and its trends, among all asylum applications pending in immigration courts, approximately 80% of applicants come from 10 countries: Guatemala , Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, India, Ecuador, Brazil and Nicaragua.
The data indicates that up to November 2022, of the asylum applications presented before the courts, and that are pending resolution, 11% are Mexican people. While 14% are from Guatemala, 13% from Honduras and 12% from El Salvador.
In this sense, it was recalled that until November 2022, about 787,196 migrants applied for asylum in the United States, while at the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, there were 749,133 pending asylum applications in the immigration courts.
defensive cases
The report highlighted that in recent years, the number of asylum applications has increased overall, with 230,389 defensive asylum applications received for fiscal year 2022, the highest annual number of such applications filed since fiscal year 1996. .
While by the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, of the 749,133 asylum applications that were pending in the immigration courts, 570,358 deal with defensive cases, that is, when migrants must defend themselves against expulsion.
In these cases, migrants can apply for asylum if they cannot or do not want to return to their country due to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on one of five grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a social group. certain.
People who are granted asylum, as well as their spouses and minor children, can remain in the United States and apply for work authorization.
In this context, it was detailed that defensive asylum applications increased fivefold from 2014 to 2022, and if the data for the last 15 fiscal years are examined, the proportion of defensive asylum applications increased considerably, going from being 31% of the applications submitted in fiscal year 2008 to 91% in fiscal year 2022.
While the acceptance rate fell, in the same period (from 2008 to 2022), the annual percentage of asylum granted went from 23.6% (2008) to 14.17% (2022). While the refusal rate has oscillated between 16.74% (2022) and 54.49% (2020).
Likewise, it was warned that the immigration courts are dealing with the highest levels of removal cases in the 40-year history of the asylum system, amid unprecedented levels of international migration to the US-Mexico border and the postponement of some hearings due to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
