TheEconomistJuly 20th 2019 271A
t a migrantshelter in Nuevo Laredo, a
city in the Mexican border state of Ta-
maulipas, the mood is cheerful. Children
play among cinderblocks and piles of sand.
Volunteers fry eggs in the kitchen. Resi-
dents tell their stories. “The salaries! It’s
seven dollars a week in Cuba,” says Eldis,
an engineer who left the island in May. A
woman, her arms draped around her two
daughters, one-ups him. “In Venezuela, it’s
six dollars a month,” she replies. They are
smiling because these hardships seem to
lie behind them. But the mood darkens
when the conversation turns to news from
the United States, where they are heading.
On July the Trump administration pro-
mulgated a rule that upends the United
States’ system of dealing with asylum-
seekers and could dash the hopes of those
in Nuevo Laredo and thousands more. Un-
der the new rules, no migrant can apply for
asylum unless he or she has sought it in “at
least one” other country along the way and
been refused.
The rules affect anyone who is not Mex-
ican and arrives at the American border by
land. That describes a lot of America-
bound migrants. Of the 688,000 appre-
hended at the border between October 2018
and June this year, only 18% were Mexican.
Most of the rest came from Central America
and countries elsewhere in Latin America.
Now they must appeal for asylum to Mexi-
co or somewhere farther south.
The order is President Donald Trump’s
latest attempt to keep immigrants out of
the country but in the headlines. It fol-
lowed the last-minute cancellation of a vis-
it to the White House by Guatemala’s presi-
dent, Jimmy Morales. He had been
expected to conclude a “safe-third-country
agreement”, which would have allowed the
United States to deny asylum to anyone
who had passed through Guatemala from
other countries. The deal fell apart, per-
haps because Guatemala’s constitutional
court seemed likely to block it.
Even before the new rule took effect, the
migrants in Nuevo Laredo were subject to
an earlier decision by Mr Trump to require
asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while
American courts process their claims. InJune Mexico’s government agreed to ex-
tend that all along its border, and to step up
policing of its borders, after Mr Trump
threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican
exports if it failed to stop the migrant flow.
“Metering” will make the migrants’ wait
longer. That is a revival of an American
policy, used during the Obama administra-
tion, to limit the number of asylum claims
the border authorities will consider each
day. This year apprehensions at the border
have been soaring, which suggests that the
bureaucratic wall has had little effect. That
may be starting to change. In June the num-
ber of apprehensions dropped 29% from
May. Hot weather usually reduces the num-
ber but the decline was bigger than expect-
ed. Even so, 95,000 people were nabbed.
Under international and American law,
people are entitled to asylum if they face
persecution in their home countries be-
cause of their race, religion, nationality,
membership of a social group or political
opinion. In recent years, governments and
judges have expanded their understanding
of what constitutes persecution. A growing
number of migrants have tried to use those
rights to gain admission to the United
States. The share asking for asylum after
being apprehended without the right docu-
ments has risen from 5% to 40% over the
past decade. Many do not qualify even un-
der an elastic definition of persecution.
Central Americans are more likely to be
fleeing poverty. Relatives in the United
States are a big draw.
A “large majority” of asylum claims at
the border are rejected, says the Justice De-
partment. Officials say that “meritless”Asylum
Building a bureaucratic wall
NUEVO LAREDO
Migration is your problem, the United States tells its neighbours
The Americas
28 Savingrightwhales
30 Bello: A faint hope for VenezuelaAlso in this section