Pubdate: Sat, 03 Apr 2010 Source: Brownsville Herald, The (TX) Copyright: 2010 The Brownsville Herald Contact: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/sections/contact/ Website: http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1402 Author: Jazmine Ulloa BORDER VIOLENCE BRINGS ASYLUM POLICY INTO QUESTION Journalist Emilio Gutierrez Soto fled Mexico in 2008, after receiving death threats believed to stem from military personnel, according to media reports. At a port of entry in western Texas, Soto voluntarily approached border agents seeking asylum, but for the next seven months, he was confined to immigration detention in El Paso. Soto is among the estimated tens of thousands of Mexican nationals, including many journalists, officials and business leaders, who have relocated to the United States since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a sweeping offensive against drug organizations in 2006. But because the legal standards of asylum are so high - and some researchers say even outdated - many, like Soto, face devastating challenges when it comes to reaching a safe haven in the United States. The recent Mexican migration spurred by the drug violence, some experts predict, will push the need for immigration reform and precipitate a reconsideration of U.S. standards for asylum overtime. "Bringing the visa system into sync with the U.S. market demand (through immigration reform) will ease the pressure from illegal immigration," said Susan Ginsburg, a nonresident fellow of the Migration Policy Institute. "We will then have more latitude to adjust the asylum system to deal with 21st century asylum-seekers." Asylum petitioners must currently demonstrate they have a "credible fear of persecution" in their country because of their race, ethnicity, religion, political views or social group, according to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. But few people seeking to flee the violence in Mexico win cases of asylum, even as many are becoming informants for U.S. officials, said Howard Campbell, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. "There are thousands of people who have the same story and whose story is legitimate," he said. When Calderon initiated the battle against drug cartels in 2006, for instance, the United States received 2,793 asylum petitions from Mexico and 3,042 the following year - only 49, or less than 2 percent, were granted status each year, according to data compiled from U.S. immigration courts by the Executive Office for Immigration Review under the U.S. Department of Justice. The number of Mexican asylum applications granted has steadily increased but is a minimal percentage of the multitude. In 2008, 72, or about 2 percent, out of the 3,459 petitions received were approved, while in 2009, 62, or about 2.2 percent, of 2,816 applications were granted asylum status. The reason so many petitions are rejected is that asylum standards were set in an older time period, Ginsburg said. Most people who have qualified for the status have fled communist regimes, dictatorships and civil wars - not criminal violence or genuine fear of violent death at the hands of drug gangs. "We are used to seeing the need for protection from governments and states, and this (the migration we are seeing now) is a fear of persecution from nonstate actors, criminal gangs that have taken control of areas of the country. "On the one hand, you do not want to provide a completely open door. On the other hand, the standards we have now reflect an older era." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D