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I personally know people who had acute medical emergencies in Mexico and were explicitly told by doctors there that they had to get back to the states ASAP if they had any realistic hope of surviving due to unavailability of high-level medical care there. And sometimes people have medical emergencies while en route. The point is that we're not going to tell someone in dire need of a doctor that they have to start hoofing it to the nearest Mexican hospital; we're going to put them on an ambulance.
I don't know that it's any less cruel than turning them away. In any event, I don't think that these new regulations are really going to change much. All the consternation about Biden's border crisis happened during a time when normal asylum rules were suspended due to COVID. The surge they expected hasn't seemed to come yet, which makes me think that the actual rules in place aren't going to change much at best, and at worst are going to encourage illegal crossings. The only real solution seems to be to make it easier for law-abiding foreigners to get work visas and give them official status as economic migrants. Second on the list would be encouraging economic development in Mexico, a growing prospect considering that COVID exposed the logistical problems with relying on China, and the political front isn't going to get any better. Even the Chinese are starting to outsource a lot of their manufacturing there because they see the writing on the wall.
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