Updated: Oct. 25, 2024, at 11:55 a.m.
A professor spoke about his research on Mexican peoples’ attitudes toward immigrants in Mexico at the Elliott School of International Affairs on Tuesday.
Omar Garcia-Ponce, a professor of political science and international affairs, said there has been an increase in immigration from Central and South America into Mexico and that most Mexicans do not believe immigrants are discriminated against in their country. The event was hosted by the Elliott School’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Initiative in order to highlight Garcia-Ponce’s research on Mexican immigration.
Garcia-Ponce said he aimed to answer two main questions about to what extent Mexicans “dehumanize and discriminate” against Central Americans and whether negative perceptions of stigmatized Central American groups among Mexicans can be mitigated by presenting information that highlights the shared experiences between the two groups, like human rights abuses.
He said the study consisted of a survey conducted in Mexico that measured different attitudes toward immigrants in the country. Garcia-Ponce said the study concluded through a survey that immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are thought of by Mexicans as people who negatively affect the culture and economy of Mexico.
“It seems that the Mexican population is not fully aware of the conditions or the experiences of many migrants in Mexico,” Garcia-Ponce said.
Garcia-Ponce said Mexico is one of the “most violent” countries in the world and that a “large fraction” Mexican citizens believe migrants contribute to this violence. He said some Mexican states, like Yucatan, have murder rates nearing those of some Western European countries.
“Yucatan has a murder rate, even until today, of around two per 100,000 people. That’s similar to the murder rate in Belgium,” he said.
Garcia-Ponce said other Mexican states such as Baja California and Guerrero have had a murder rate similar to El Salvador, which had over 5,000 homicides in 2015 but has decreased to under a thousand in recent years.
“Around nine out of 10 people believe that there is a lot of discrimination in the U.S. against Mexican people. When they ask similar questions, but with regards to immigrants in Mexico, the proportion is completely different,” he said. “Like very few people say that there is a lot of discrimination, less than 10 percent believe that migrants in Mexico are discriminated against.”
Garcia-Ponce said polls taken in Mexico show that some believe that the federal government should not protect immigrants entering the country and that another 2015 study concluded that 50 percent of Mexicans agree that the government should be deporting undocumented immigrants in the country.
“That survey was conducted in 2015, and mine was just conducted two months ago. Interestingly, the patterns haven’t changed much. There’s still a strong anti-immigrant sentiment,” Garcia-Ponce said.
This story was updated to clarify the following:
This story was updated to clarify that states like Yucatan have murder rates similar to Western European countries, not just smaller countries in general. This story was also updated to clarify that Mexican citizens believe that migrants contribute to crime, not just that they are a source of crime broadly.
