| | |  Americas & Beyond 
Mexicans Top Canadian Asylum List
 The News
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April 14, 2010
| | UN affirms that over 9,000 requested asylum in 2009 | |
Mexico City – In 2009, more than 9,000 Mexicans sought asylum in Canada, making it the country with the most requests, according to the Regional Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
At the signing of a cooperative agreement with the National Commission to Prevent Discrimination (Conapred), UNHCR representative Fernando Protti Alvarado said that 680 people applied for asylum in Mexico, 113 of whom were admitted as refugees.
Speaking before Conapred president Ricardo Antonio Bucio Mujica, Protti said that according to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951, which Mexico joined in 2000, a refuge is defined as someone who is persecuted due to political, religious or racial questions, as well as victims of violence.
Also present at the signing was the general coordinator of the Interior Secretariat’s Mexican Commission to Help Refugees, Katia Somohano Silva, who said that a group of earthquake survivors from Haiti will arrive soon. A program to accept refugees from Haiti began following the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed a quarter of a million people.
Even before this program was created, Haitians were one of the top nationalities to request asylum in Mexico. Last year, 22.9 percent of those seeking asylum were from Guatemala, 16.3 percent were Colombian, 14.9 percent were from El Salvador, 14.2 percent were Haitian and 4.2 percent were from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some also came from Iraq.
For his part, Conapred’s Bucio said that with this agreement, the approximately100,000 refugees residing in Mexico will have more legal resources and will be able to make complaints of discrimination before the National Council to Prevent Discrimination.
During the ceremony of the agreement’s signing, Bucio talked about statistics of Mexicans’ attitudes toward foreigners: 19 percent said they would not hire foreigners and 42 percent would refuse to live with foreigners. Those who suffer the most discrimination are other Latin Americans, Bucio said.
Discrimination impedes social and cultural integration of refugees, and in extreme cases limits their fundamental rights to life, Bucio said.
With Canada’s thousands of requests from Mexicans seeking asylum, last summer Canada abruptly began requiring Mexicans to apply for a visa.
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