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On the American-Mexican border, this year the Biden administration implemented a policy intended to allow a stronger/politically-more-viable legal basis for ejecting migrants. In short, they created a remote-asylum application system as part of broader remote-immigration-permit systems. The nominal position is that migrants are to request the migration / asylum remotely from their own country, and then wait for the response of yay/nay. If they attempt to illegally immigrate before their application is complete, their digital-application can be rejected and they can be immediately deported as bad-faith applicants, and if they attempt to apply for asylum at the border without trying the app, they can be sent back to their countries and told to apply via the system.
The premise was somewhat undermined by various Biden exceptions to give various groups special permissions to stay, and the sheer numbers that kept coming after a temporary pause after the number of deportation flights was contrasted to the number of arrivals, and the sanctuary city migrant-bussing fiasco.
South of the American border, a number of different dynamics are taking place, centered primarily on spreading awareness via social media of safe-ish and commercially available migration services that have increased both awareness and perception of safety, sometimes with government facilitation.
Among other things-
-The Darian Gap, the link between Colombia and Panama, has seen functional guide services and entire social media channels and migration-facilitation industries between boats and forest guides and supply traders. The social media awareness of viable routes, legal strategies such as claiming asylum, and analysis/assessments of the US permissiveness of migrants once you reach there, are widespread. As with most businesses, as businesses scale, they compete and improve in pursuit of profit and client-share.
-Local governments in the Darian Gap, Panama, and Costa Rica, being overwhelmed if they try to stop or hinder the flow and at risk of criminal malingering if they just ignore it, have gradually adopted policies of functionally regulating migration flow independent of national level (let alone American) desires. A migrant you stop is your problem; a migrant you charge for a clean hotel room before moving on is a revenue source, and less likely to be working with the cartels against you. Local governments are in some places functionally legalizing/displacing the more harmful criminal types.
-Nicaragua in particular has started a racket of direct migrant shuttle flights from high-migration capitals to Nicaragua. In much the same way of the Belarusian migration crisis bringing Iraqis to the Polish border while the Belarusian government got the money for the 'tour packages,' Nicaragua basically relaxed visa-arrival restrictions and starting flying in planeloads of migrants from countries like Haiti and Cuba, and then gives the migrants a short amount of time to get out of the country starting from halfway up central america. Naturally Ortega makes his cuts, and while the US has pressured some airlines to stop, there's still plenty of money.
-Building on public awareness, the US domestic squabble of the Texas bussing of migrants to sanctuary cities was an international highlight on the, well, 'free reception' on hand if you did arrive in the US and reach a Sanctuary city. When internationally recognizable cities like New York complain that they can't continue to spend thousands of dollars a month per migrant providing food, housing, job permisions, and etc., that's not a problem- that's an advertisement to get it while you can.
-Finally, there has been increasing regional coordination between migration-transit countries on the subject. Some of this has been urged by the US, and some has been about, well, using migration as a way to urge changes in US policy that interest the coordinating powers. Not too long ago, there was a Mexican conference with many of the migration-sources, with one of the resolution points asserting a general right to migrate- implicitly obliging the US to not only accept migrants in general, but actively facilitate safe routes and legal avenues into the US. (Other points included removing the current US legal structure that gives greater asylum weight to people from repressive/anti-US countries, like Cuba.)
Put it together, and migration to the US has become hybrid government-private commercial business, with spreading awareness and perceptions of safety and reliability, with highly public 'win' conditions and regional governments sympathetic to further facilitating it.
Yes, good comment. Social media is also the major driver of illegal immigration from Africa to Europe. Before there was little knowledge of what ‘life in Europe’ is like. Now, they see what are essentially infomercial TikToks by the smugglers themselves about how great life in Europe is.
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