Mexico wants more help for the region

When the caravan of thousands of Honduran migrants arrived in the Mexican city of Tijuana in mid-November, after a month of traveling, it was not greeted very warmly. At the border posts with California, they were told that the United States would only allow them in their asylum procedure.

It was found that the United States was preparing hundreds of applications a day. This means that many migrants may have to camp in the border town for months.

Initially, they seemed to want to camp at Playas de Tijuana, the tourist seaside neighborhood where the US border fence enters the Pacific Ocean. Several hundred street dwellers took to the streets and chanted slogans such as "Tijuana First" and "Me-xi-coooo".

The right-wing mayor of Tijuana also decided to turn fiercely towards the migrants, who, according to him, have many "lazy" and "blowers". Juan Manuel Gastélum also put the hat on the slogan "Make Tijuana Great Again", with which he quickly attracted the attention of Donald Trump. "The mayor of Tijuana said his city was ill-prepared to deal with so many migrants, it could take six months," the US president said on Twitter. "The United States is also unprepared for this invasion and will oppose it.They are responsible for crime and major problems in Mexico.Go home!"

Bottle neck

The critical reception of migrants in Tijuana is striking. On their way to Mexico, they were mainly supported by local residents who gave them food, drinks and clothes. But the chaotic arrival at the border also shows that Mexico does not expect Central Americans. The country is already deploying hundreds of thousands of central Americans every year in their home countries, more than the expulsion of the United States.

Trump can "go home" on Twitter, Mexico fears that many migrants will stay home after the beach of their American dream. Now that Trump is turning the South American border into a bottleneck, according to the Mexican authorities, there are certainly nine-eyed migrants. The number of asylum applications from Central America has risen sharply in recent years. Mexico will thus become a final destination of the transit country.

The chaos in Tijuana coincides with the arrival of a new Mexican government next Saturday. The next president of the left, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is already in talks with Washington to find common solutions to border problems. If the United States continues to stick to its policy of "staying in Mexico," then Obrador wants development assistance in return. When, in 2014, large groups of migrants from Central America, mainly minors, sought asylum in the United States, the Obama administration launched the Alliance for Progress . To date, $ 600 million has been made available for social projects and investments in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. However, one-third of this amount is stuck in the Washington bureaucracy and has not been spent yet.

The new Mexican government does not just want this remaining money to be released. She also suggests that the United States increase the amount to at least $ 1.5 billion in the coming years. In addition, Americans should help reduce private investment in Central America and southern Mexico. Obrador calls this a "Marshall Plan" with which migration could be more structurally restrained than with a separation wall.