Tag Archives: Mexican

Gender, Nationality + Migration

Central America & U.S. News | Central American Women

UN: Ongoing gender-based violence in Central America threatening to create another refugee crisis
  • The UN has warned in a recent report that as femicide and sexual and domestic violence showing no signs of abating in parts of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the region (and the U.S.) needs to prepare another refugee surge.
  • Gang violence has exploited women in the region as governments have failed to address the region’s drug cartel problem, while escaping women become vulnerable to trafficking.
  • Advocates for women refugees have argued that the Mexico’s crackdown on migrants–with U.S. backing–has heightened insecurity for women escaping violence.

Read more:
“UN agency warns of ‘looming’ refugee crisis as women flee Central America and Mexico” (UN News Service)
“Women Refugees Are ‘Running For Their Lives’ In Central America” (BuzzFeed News)
“Mexico’s migration crackdown escalates dangers for Central Americans” (The Guardian)

(Image Credit: Amy Stillman/IRIN, via the UN News Agency)

Ideology + Affiliation, Nationality + Migration

Egypt News | Mexicans & Journalists

Egypt muzzles journalists during investigation of killing of Mexican tourists
  • Eight Mexican tourists and their Egyptian guides were killed by Egyptian security forces after allegedly being mistaken for insurgents.
  • International and domestic journalists have been banned from covering the investigation into the incident, leading to criticisms of a lack of transparency.
  • Human rights organizations have condemned Egypt’s military operations in the Western Sahara and Sinai Peninsula, arguing that civilian deaths have been endemic.

“Usually when there is such a ban on publication it has do with very tough cases where one could find evidence or embarrassing information about the involvement of some government high officials or military strongmen.”

Read the full story at the New York Times.

(Image Credit: Mohamed El-Shahed/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images, via The New York Times)

Age, Nationality + Migration

U.S. News | Child Immigrants

1 Comment
Audit finds U.S. border patrol violated rules in vast majority of deportations of children over five-year period
  • The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that from 2009 to 2014, 93% of unaccompanied Mexican and Canadian children under 14 were deported without documentation of the safety assurance process.
  • Unaccompanied Mexican and Canadian children undergo interviews with border patrol authorities to determine if they have been or will be trafficked, persecuted, or otherwise endangered in their home country.
  • Immigration lawyers and rights monitors have questioned the effectiveness and legality of having border patrol oversee the interviews, arguing their officers are not the appropriate figures to make such determinations.

“CBP just does not have the training, the understanding of humanitarian protection, to make the assessment of these children from Mexico before sending them back to their home countries.”

Read the full story at the Guardian.

(Image Credit: John Moore/Getty Images, via the Guardian)

Nationality + Migration

U.S. Feature | Guest Workers

The Low Tide of Slavery

The low-skilled counterpart to the U.S.’s highly promoted H1-B program, the H-2 visa program brings guest workers to the U.S. to fill low- or unskilled labor positions, including farm work, construction, household maintenance, and elements of the food harvesting supply chain. BuzzFeed News investigates how limited enforcement of regulations and workers’ unbreakable tie to their employer while in the country exacerbate employer-employee power inequalities in the program, leaving guest workers vulnerable to slavery-like exploitation including wage undercutting, visa and passport withholding, illegal fee leveraging, basic resource deprivation, and more insidious threats like sexual violence and death.

Read the full feature at BuzzFeed News.

(Image Credit: Ken Bensinger/BuzzFeed News)

Age, Nationality + Migration
Mexico drops burdensome requirements for children coming from abroad attempting to enroll in schools
  • The Education Department announced that migrant students will no longer have to provide government-certified, translated transcripts from their original schools in order to enroll officially.
  • Previously, families faced costs that climbed into the hundreds of dollars in order to obtain apostilles and government-approved translations.
  • According to one NGO, there are an estimated 307,000 foreign-born students studying in Mexican schools, with the population of Mexico-born returning migrant children potentially as large or larger.

“Our task is to guarantee equal access to educational services … for migrants, who are an extremely vulnerable sector of the population. … Our goal is to make sure that access, retention and promotion in the educational system is based only on children’s academic performance.”

Read the full story at Fox News Latino.

(Image Credit: Getty Images, via Fox News)