Public officials in Mexico say they expect a 15% decrease in the number of immigrants in the U.S. who will return south of the border for visits this holiday season.
The estimate came recently from representatives of the Mexican government's Paisano Program, which is intended to help immigrants who are making visits avoid corrupt officials, narcotics traffickers and other potential pitfalls on their journeys. They said they expect 850,000 immigrants to make visits from the U.S., down from approximately 1 million last year. The officials attributed the anticipated decrease to the current economic recession.
Officials kicked off the holiday season with a recent Paisano Program Fair at the Mexican Consulate in the Westlake district west of Downtown Los Angeles. Itzel Ortiz Zaragoza, the national coordinator of the program, said his agency has a staff of 1,300 ready to serve immigrants returning for visits to Mexico.
Cecilia Romero, who serves as a national Commissioner of Migration in Mexico, said that the Paisano Program has continued to evolve over the past 20 years, helping root out corrupt public officials seeking bribes at border crossings and engaging in other illegal behavior.
The Mexican government created the Paisano program 20 years to fight cases of abuse, extortion, robbery, corruption and arrogance by public officials against immigrants going back to their country.
The program and other efforts have brought improvements over the years, but there's more work to do, too. Mexico recently ranked at the top of the list for official corruption in all of Latin America, according to Transparency International. Data from the World Bank indicates that corruption costs $60 billion annually in Mexico — approximately the equivalent of four times the nation's income from petroleum exports, which account for 9% of its overall economy.
Those statistics are a big part of the reason that the Paisano Program pushes on with its mission.
Roberto Bravo, president of the Binational Council of Mexican Community Organizations, said that he recently felt the sting of corruption in dealings with a customs official in Mexico City.
"I've explained to the people at Paisano Program that when you arrive with a Mexican passport, you're asked if you're from Mexico," Bravo said. "When you say yes, and that you have two nationalities, what they do is to send you to the line for foreigners. So what guarantees does one have by being Mexican?"
Bravo listened to the speeches by the Mexican authorities at the kickoff event for the Paisano Program. He heard them urge visiting immigrants to do more than denounce abuses in the media and take the next step of filing official complaints.
"The authorities tell me that they've changed the agents because there was a lot of confusion and problems with them," Bravo said. "What I tell them is that they have to train their personnel, because otherwise that's how abuses continue."
Migration commissioner Romero said officials are working on such matters, but also counting on visitors to cut off the bribes that many corrupt officials desire.
"I ask for more commitment, more work, to educate the community about their rights and responsibilities," Romero said, adding that it will require a culture of prevention in order to keep migrants from distributing their dollars in bribes as they make their way through Mexico.
Leticia Salazar, a member of Mexico's Congress and president of the Commission of Population and Migrant Affairs, said that a new element of the effort will have legislators monitoring the movement of migrants at some border crossings during the holidays.
"A Congressperson will be watching at the border posts in Paisano Program modules," Salazar said, adding that the legislators be handing out "charolas" stickers that will be similar to a form of identification that the members of Mexico's congress wear — badges that are generally seen as giving them protection from corrupt officials.
Mireya Olivera is editor of Impulso.
Photos by Impulso.
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