MEADE • U.S. bears some blame for turmoil in Mexico

repeatedly shown that the grounds for protection they defined apply in many situations they didn’t anticipate, and persecution need not be at the hands of a military dictatorship or a caricature of the Soviet Union.

Taking these cases seriously would not open the floodgates. Undocumented immigration from Mexico is net zero since 2005 and net negative since 2009. More important, most victims of violence in Mexico do not want to leave — even when they have been chased out of their villages and had their houses burned down, when they’ve been kidnapped and tortured, or their spouses and children forcibly disappeared. In more than 250 longform interviews with victims of violence and their surviving family members, I’ve heard exactly two mentions of seeking protection in the United States. When victims do leave, it’s generally a last resort and often an emergency.

A man in Tijuana who had refused recruitment by a drug cartel was in the middle of being handed over by the police to organized crime when he escaped by jumping off of a pedestrian bridge into traffic, throwing himself at the mercy of a Department of Homeland Security security guard. Protection in the U.S. was a lifeline for a person who was specifically targeted, not a floodgate for anyone who wants to come.

The asylum system is admittedly an inefficient way to protect people fleeing such a broad wave of violence. Congress should craft legislation that acknowledges that there’s an unconventional but brutal war going on in Mexico and offer protection to well-defined groups so that we do not need to adjudicate every individual claim. This could help reduce the crushing backlog in our immigration courts and catalyze a broader assessment of why U.S. presidential administrations from both parties have failed to develop an effective policy to reduce violence and defend democracy in Mexico.

Until then, asylum remains a critical lifeline for individuals and families fleeing violence in Mexico.