Member Since: 2/2/2014
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More African and Asian Migrants Are Arriving in Mexico
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Despite the dangers, about 7,882 Africans and Asians presented themselves at Mexican immigration in the first seven months of this year – 86% higher than in the whole of 2015 and more than four times the number registered in 2014. At the end of August, Tapachula’s immigration registered 424 Africans in just two days.
Over the past decade, Latin America has become an increasingly popular route of entry to the US for Asian and African migrants, but the current surge in numbers is unprecedented.
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Tapachula’s main square is jam-packed with people enjoying noisy fair rides and junk food stalls.
On an avenue just off the main square, lie the cheap hotels where most African and Asian migrants choose to stay; where a new curry house – run by a Mexican cook who was taught to make dhal and fish curry by a Bangladeshi migrant – is the most popular food joint.
Just off the main drag is Mama Africa’s – what everyone calls Concepción González, 56, who runs the $3a-night, no-frills Imperial Hotel. Here, there are people from across Africa: Burundi, South Africa, Nigeria, Somalia, Mozambique, Ghana, Congo and many Haitians pretending to be Congolese in order to avoid deportation.
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Sitting in a small cafe in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, Gorjit recalled the harrowing experiences that led him there as he outlined his hopes and fears for the future.
The young man with chiseled features said he left his home in northern India after political strife took the life of his father and uncle. He sold his house and escaped first to Qatar, then to Brazil and on to Argentina where he worked for six months.
The cafe where Gorjit sat, that bears a sign in Bengali, lies across the street from the Hotel Palafox which is one of the main places where migrants from Africa and Asia who have made it to Mexico hang out, swapping stories from their odysseys and listening to music on mobile phones.
One of them, a Somali refugee called Ismael, said he was living in South Africa when a wave of xenophobic attacks swept the country last year.
"Every day they threatened us," he recalled. Going back to his war-torn homeland, he added, would have been tantamount to "just go and kill yourself."
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Tapachula has long been a temporary resting place for Central American migrants heading through Mexico on an effort to get to the United States. In recent years the small, sleepy and hot city has also become a hub for migrants from further afield, many of whom plan to seek asylum if they reach US soil.
The rise of African and Asian migrants in Latin America reflects both the tightening of border restrictions in Europe and their loosening in some Latin American countries, such as Ecuador.
The journey is not only long and arduous. At some points it is outright dangerous as well.
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"I was seven days without food," says Gorjit, the young Indian whose feet were so badly damaged he still has difficulty walking. "I thought I was going to die."
"In the first camp, we sleep like dogs, outside on the stone. The food is the same, two times a day. For twenty-five days, dry rice. That is all they can afford to give us," said Ismael, the Somali. "But we say thank you. If we are still alive until now, we just say thank you to God."
Having crossed the world to get to Mexico from northern India Gorjit had no money for a flight, or even to take the long-haul busses that trundle up to the US border. He said he was planning to continue his journey via the clandestine routes taken by Central American migrants but was worried about Mexico's drug cartels. In 2010, an Indian was found dead among 72 migrants massacred by the Zetas drug gang in Tamaulipas state.
"I'm afraid, really afraid," he said. "At night sometimes I start crying thinking about my life. I have heard there are gangs up ahead that kill. All I've got is my life."
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Source(s): 1, 2
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