By Anna Giaritelli
December 4, 2021 - 7:00 AM
Migration to the southern border of the United States from far-off countries spiked in 2021 as economic turmoil and the Biden administration’s eased immigration policies prompted droves from other continents to traverse to America.
The number of people encountered at the southern border from countries other than Mexico or the three top countries of origin in Central America was seven times greater over the past 12 months ending in September than the previous year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. One-in-5 people, or 378,000 of the 1.7 million, who were encountered at the southern border in the government’s fiscal year 2021 were from nations other than those four.
The biggest change in 2021 was the rise in arrivals from South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. In 2000, 97% of the migrants Border Patrol encountered were Mexican citizens. By 2014, more people apprehended at the southern border were from the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — than were from Mexico, data show. In 2019, nearly two-thirds of people encountered at the border were from one of the three Northern Triangle nations.
In 2021, more than 4,100 Russians were encountered compared to fewer than 500 the previous year. Apprehensions have spiked further in October, with more than 1,500 Russian citizens apprehended.
More than 48,000 Venezuelans were intercepted at the border in 2021, up from fewer than 2,800 in 2020.
While the Border Patrol historically has encountered small numbers of people from more than 100 nations every year, the number from some of those countries are rising significantly, as are the numbers of countries. Border Patrol agents in Del Rio, Texas, announced this week arrests of people from around the world, including Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Syria, and Lebanon.
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The United Nations International Organization for Migration’s World Migration Report released on Wednesday concluded that the U.S. is the top destination for migrants globally for several reasons.
People across Latin America, which comprises Central and South America, have taken a harder hit economically than any other region, according to Michael Clemens, director of migration, displacement, and humanitarian policy at the Washington-based Center for Global Development. While the coronavirus pandemic chipped away at 2% of the economy in the developing world, it erased 7% of the entire Latin American economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“That has meant skyrocketing unemployment and economic anxiety all over the region, amidst red-hot demand for some kinds of labor in the United States," Clemens wrote in an email. "This partially explains migration pressure from several parts of the hemisphere."
"That pressure has particularly impacted people in Latin America who are already migrants from other countries in the region,” Clemens said. “In very bad economic times, countries often restrict migrants' access to lawful residence, jobs, and benefits. Countries across Latin America have done this with migrants from Haiti, who had spread across the region years before the pandemic, pushing them northward.”
How migrants are getting to the southern border
The IOM in November reported that the pandemic prompted a sharp rise in migrants transiting from South America to North America via a strait of land known as the Darien Gap, which connects Colombia to Panama. People who live in South America or who fly into the continent from the Eastern Hemisphere began increasingly trekking through the jungle to get to Mexico.
More than 125,000 migrants passed through the Darien Gap over the past year, more than the entire 2010-2020 decade combined. More than half were Haitians. On the U.S.'s southern border, more than 45,000 Haitians illegally crossed the border, 10 times as many as in the previous year. Three-quarters of the Haitians entered the U.S. near Del Rio, Texas, where tens of thousands crossed in a matter of days in September and set up an encampment under an international bridge.
The U.N. organization found that migrants from the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and the Americas have been crossing through the Darien Gap for a decade, but far more are coming due to the pandemic wreaking havoc on their home countries.
Other migrants opted to fly directly from their home countries into Mexico because the Mexican government does not require a visa for dozens of countries whose citizens are visiting for up to 180 days.
“They seem to be coming primarily to take advantage of a better economic situation in the United States,” said retired federal immigration judge Andrew Arthur.
“Some potential migrants are choosing the US for economic reasons. There is very high demand for some kinds of labor in the US right now, at a time when jobs remain hollowed out in several key Latin American countries,” Clemens wrote. “That push and pull, in the presence of extremely restricted channels for regular migration, is a recipe for high irregular migration pressure.”
Arthur pointed to the Biden administration’s handling of the border over the past 11 months as another leading reason people from all over the world have chosen to migrate to the U.S.
“People view this as the time to come to the United States,” said Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy for the conservative Center for Immigration Studies. “The Biden administration undid many of the policies that President Trump had. ... They really haven’t substituted those for any that would impede people from coming to the United States.”
For example, the Biden administration rescinded the Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols, known as the Remain in Mexico program. Under the program, asylum-seekers who crossed the border illegally or presented at a port of entry would have to remain outside the U.S. for months while their claims were processed. The program was rolled out to deter people who would otherwise make an asylum claim and be released into the U.S. The Biden administration was forced by the Supreme Court over the summer to restart the program and is in the process of reimplementing it while also trying to end it through a process that will hold up in court.
That half a million people who illegally crossed the border over the past year were released into the country is also a factor in why so many are coming, Arthur said, referring to numbers that Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas shared during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in November.
Given the influx of people coming from around the world and the emergence of the omicron variant, recently retired U.S. Border Patrol Chief of Staff Salvador Zamora was wary of the U.S.'s ability to handle both.
"There are no new measures in place that have stemmed the flow of people into the U.S.," said Zamora. "When you have large volumes of people migrating from Africa or from Europe to Central and South America into Mexico and then into the care of Border Patrol personnel now without any slowing efforts in sight, it's extremely concerning.
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