In August, Kevin Cole and Zaid Hydari of RSN, together with Kelsey Norman and Ana Martin Gil of Rice University’s Baker Institute contributed to the important ongoing discussion around U.S. asylum and the southern border in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post. 

The article was based on the results of a survey conducted by co-authors in March 2021 and in response to the Biden administration’s new “collaborative migration management strategy” for engaging with the United States’ southern neighbors that calls for, among other things, building and improving other nations’ systems of asylum to better protect migrants.

As in the study and in this article, we argued that Mexico’s asylum system can be strengthened by bolstering transnational cooperation between Mexican civil society organizations and U.S. policymakers and NGOs.

In other words, several objectives can be met at the same time through building the institutional capacities in transit/destination states like Mexico, responsibility-sharing, and refugee protection and that transnational civil society engagement is part of the solution.