2023-09-09 07:01:00
The images shown in some videos show groups of migrants fighting in the streets of New York or threats of robbery in supermarkets or confrontations with the Police that until recently seemed far from the Big Apple.
But this week its mayor, Eric Adams, seems to have had his cup overflowing and in reaction to the disorders he harshly criticized President Joe Biden’s immigration policy and did not skimp on warning that the crisis is so serious that he does not see a solution to it. future.
What Adams questioned privately for a few months came to light during a meeting at City Hall last Wednesday. There he related that “at first they only came from Venezuela. Now from Ecuador, Mexico, West Africa… People from all over the world are determined to cross the southern part of the border and enter New York City.”
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According to data published in the New York media, 110,000 migrants have arrived in the city in recent months in irregular conditions, an average of 500 per day. And as a rule, the state must provide them with health, education, social assistance and food. Of that group, 20,000 are children, of which 19,000 started classes this week.
“I have never had a problem in my life that I didn’t see a solution to, I don’t see how this is going to end. “This problem will destroy the city of New York,” Mayor Adams assured lapidaryly, insisting that this care for the migrant population in an irregular situation will mean for the city a deficit of 12,000 million dollars, which will have to be cut from city services.
The knot in the Darien
Hundreds of kilometers further south, the horde of migrants crossing the Darién border between Colombia and Panama, on the route to North America, also raises alarms. And although the situation is not new, just this week it did motivate the presence in Bogotá of high-level officials of the United States government with the idea of containing the problem from its roots — or at least preventing it from reaching the border area. , which the mayor of New York mentioned—.
While Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva attended the visit of the White House National Security Advisor, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall; the head of the United States Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, and the Undersecretary of State for Management and Resources, Richard Verma to analyze joint plans to confront irregular migration across the border with Panama, President Gustavo Petro launched his own plan.
“If we really want to stop the humanitarian disaster of the exodus through the Darién, we must economically unblock Venezuela,” he said on his X account.
Petro made this request after the United Nations Office for Human Rights denounced this week about murders, disappearances, human trafficking, intimidation and sexual violence in that migrant crossing between Colombia and Panama.
According to the UN, so far in 2023, more than 330,000 people have already crossed the jungle, an unprecedented number and one-fifth of which corresponds to children. To put it in perspective, in all of 2022 some 248,000 migrants undertook this route, so 2023 is on track to become a record year.
This call from the Colombian president to the international community did not go unnoticed, since his request to lift the economic blockade could directly benefit the interests of the Venezuelan regime, led by Nicolás Maduro.
A hand to Maduro?
Petro tried to justify his request to lift the economic blockade on Venezuela by arguing that this will allow “stopping” the exodus of migrants through the Darién, but it is not clear that this is an effective measure.
Venezuela is subject to a series of sanctions imposed by the international community that accuses the regime of systematically violating Human Rights. The Venezuelan government has alleged that it lost up to 99% of its income as a result of the economic and financial blockade that it classifies as “criminal.”
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Despite the intention to promote better conditions for Venezuelans, there is no certainty that lifting this blockade will solve the exodus of migrants through the Darién, since not only Venezuelan citizens make their transit there, but also migrants of other nationalities. like Cubans, Haitians, Ecuadorians and Nigerians.
In any case, the irregular migration of Venezuelans to other latitudes has been experiencing greater difficulties as many countries have begun to increasingly restrict aid and regularization processes.
According to a recent report from El País, from Spain, in Iceland, in northern Europe, despite having a shortage of workers, Venezuelans are denied their request for asylum and work permits. Instead, they offer them a financial contribution and a plane ticket so that they agree to leave of their “own will.”
Yes there will be unlocking of funds
According to a report from the Spanish newspaper El País, “$3 billion in Venezuelan assets held abroad will be released in the coming weeks.” Its management, according to the journalistic note, will be in charge of the UN and will be used for works and sanitation to improve the lives of Venezuelans.
In response to that announcement, President Gustavo Petro indicated in his X account that: “The step taken by the UN and the US to unlock Venezuelan funds that are invested in social functions is excellent. I propose to Venezuela and the US to unblock the SDRs, Special Drawing Rights, of Venezuela in the IMF, which are their property, and process them through the Development Bank of Latin America, CAF. Unblock Venezuela, hold free elections, reduce methane emissions in Venezuela and end the exodus through the Darien to the United States.”
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