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Around 230,000 Mexicans have been forced from their homes to escape violence from Mexico’s drug war, of whom about half are seeking refuge in the United States.
Latin America News Dispatch reports from the border town of El Paso in Texas and looks at why so many Mexicans are fleeing their homes and their fate in the United States.
Some Mexicans, especially those living in and around violence-plagued border towns cross into the U.S. illegally, others apply for asylum status. But only a small fraction of Mexicans who apply are granted asylum.
Last year, more than 3,200 Mexicans filed asylum applications in the U.S, of which asylum was granted in only 49 cases— a success rate of just 1.5 percent. In comparison, the United States granted asylum last year to 234 out of 563 Colombian applicants (41.6 percent) and 3,795 out of 10,087 Chinese applicants (37.6 percent), according to the Executive Office of Immigration Review.
In the Mexican desert city of Ciudad Juarez, an epicentre of drug turf wars that have killed over 1,000 people this year, tens of thousands of middle class families have left their homes over the last five years to seek refuge elsewhere in Mexico and or in the U.S.
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