Mexicans Trapped Abroad Due to COVID-19

Traveling abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a risk. No matter how careful travelers are or how willing they are to self-isolate after returning, in some cases people are forced to remain outside of Mexico.

Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) have been unusually occupied with an unforeseen issue. Information from Pew Research Center places Mexico as one of the countries with the highest percentage of people living abroad; the number reaches close to 12 million. Regardless of the high figures, there is not much variety as 98 percent of these migrants stay in the US. This still means that up to of 250,000 Mexican live in other countries.

A lot of Mexicans abroad are fully settled and do not feel the need to return to Mexico. However, for some nationals the situation is problematic. Although they want to return, cancelled flights and widespread travel restrictions complicate the matter. Peru and Venezuela, for instance, have simply closed their borders. In Peru, Expansión calculates that between 200 and 600 Mexicans are trapped because of these measures. Some of these are young travelers who have turned to the SRE to ask for help. Hotels were turning them away, meaning they had little options left to stay their nights. At the Mexican Embassy in Lima, a person filmed older people and children who had lost access to resources, now turning to the Mexican government for support. Mexicans are trapped in countries as far as Egypt, reported El Universal.

SRE is not sitting idly. Its highest functionary, Marcelo Ebrard, had already promised that the ministry would do its best to repatriate any Mexicans stuck outside. He provided data supporting this promise: 8,432 citizens had already been repatriated with support from the ministry. Most came from France (1,342), Peru (1,170) and other countries affected by the pandemic, including the UK (631) and Ireland (430). Some returned from more remote states such as Kenya (24) or Thailand (105). From Egypt, 130 Mexicans had been repatriated. The problem is far from solved, however. Only in Spain there are already over 100 new cases of people asking to be repatriated to Mexico.