US President
Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House has given new hopes, said the stranded
migrants on the Mexican-US border on Wednesday who suffered the extreme
policies of former US President Donald Trump for four years. “We’re very happy. We feel hopeful again,” said Nicaraguan
Jessica Valles, a migrant who has been waiting in the Mexican border city of
Ciudad Juarez for 18 months.
Valles, who is stuck in northern Mexico with other migrants, watched the
Biden’s sworn-in ceremony on television.
Another migrant from El Salvador, Fatima, who has been in Mexico for two
years said, “It makes us feel more confident and we see that the new
president is not putting us to one side and is thinking of us”. “We are all human beings and we
all have the right to a better life,” she added.
Trump instigated anger in the mind of Mexican migrants during his 2016
election campaign when he referred them as “rapists” and “drug dealers” and
also pledged to construct a wall across the southern US border. Even his “zero
tolerance” policy which he initiated in 2018 saw thousands of children getting separated
from their parents at the border. This was allegedly a strategy to terrify the
migrant’s families, before the government backed down, reported AFP.
Also read: Asia sees in Joe Biden presidency with healthy gains
Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program also targeted tens of
thousands of non-Mexican asylum seekers who were mainly from Central America
and sent them back over the border, pending the outcome of their asylum
applications.
However, Biden’s very first move, after his inauguration on Wednesday, was to order a halt on the construction of Trump’s hulking steel fence snaking
along the southern border.
Mexico warmly welcomed his act and his other immigration related reforms
as well. Biden has also decided to send a bill to Congress to rebuild
immigration policies and provided millions of undocumented migrants living
inside the country, a path to citizenship, as per his aides, reported AFP.
Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s Homeland Security Department nominee told on
Tuesday that the arriving migrants will be allowed to apply for asylum and have
their cases evaluated.
“Politicians promise a lot, but we hope that this will be the case,
that we will be given the opportunity,” said Dennys Lopez, a migrant from
Cuba.
