Usually, in Tijuana, at the Mexican border post that opens the door to the American dream, we see migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, or Nicaragua passing through. But for several months already, the Ukrainians have been more and more numerous, and the flows have grown to the rhythm of the Russian bombardments. According to the Reuters agency, they now represent the third most common nationality. Arrived as tourists in Mexico, sometimes after a long journey that took them through Poland, Croatia, Hungary, then Western Europe, they want to cross, enter the United States.
For several days, the American authorities remained inflexible in the face of these asylum seekers from the depths of Europe. Before opening the floodgates to the humanitarian crisis generated by the war. Since March 11, Ukrainians wishing to enter the country have been entitled to temporary protected status which allows them to stay on American soil for one year. A humanitarian visa that allows them to move freely from one state to another to join their loved ones, justified by “Russia’s unjustified war of aggression in Ukraine“, reads the memo from the Department of Homeland Security.
Would-be migrants from Ukraine and Russia are swapping tips on social media on how to make the journey to the US southern border via Mexico to claim asylum as the Russian invasion on Ukraine continues https://t.co/GV0groZoPF pic.twitter.com/O7xTuslAnQ
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2022
Ukrainians who manage to reach US soil are virtually guaranteed asylum anyway. Only four of the 1,553 who entered between September 2021 and February 2022 were denied entry under the public health order that allows the United States to deport migrants without the possibility of humanitarian protection.
Except that at the border, there are also Russians, who are not quite treated in the same way. They don’t need a visa to enter Mexico either. Among those who fled the regime of Vladimir Putin, some therefore took a flight to Cancun or Mexico City, before also approaching the border with the United States. But at San Ysidro, when the Ukrainians cross, the Russians are turned back by the border guards under a public health order, “Title 42”, which, for two years, has imposed very strict conditions at the border to prevent the spread of Covid-19. A text adopted under the Trump administration, still in place, which above all makes it possible to lock down the country and exclude migrants in the name of health restrictions. Ukrainians are exempt, Russians are not.
They therefore remain in place, on the Mexican side, just in front of the barbed wire which marks the point of entry into the United States. Monday, March 21, there were about thirty of them, adults and children, in an improvised camp away from the long line of pedestrians. This is where they wait, where they eat, where they sleep, some on the bitumen. No question of leaving the place for fear of missing “the” moment when the border will open.
Mark, 32, patient for five days. He testifies in the San Francisco Chronicle : in Russia he took part in demonstrations against the war, he had trouble with the police and feared to be called up for military service: “For us, he says, there is no going back.”. Each time he tries to cross, the border guards return his passport and ask him to turn back. Anton, another 27-year-old Russian, told a local newspaper: “I’m afraid. But I’m less afraid than my relatives who are forced to stay in Russia“.