Drug Violence Spawns Rise in Mexicans Seeking Political Asylum in US
Fox News Latino
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April 23, 2013
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Family members cry in front of a car in which two men lay dead on March 22, 2010 in Juarez, Mexico. (Getty Images)

It used to be virtually impossible for Mexicans to gain admission to the United States as refugees – until the increasingly violent and powerful drug cartels made certain parts of the country unlivable for many.

Though the number of Mexicans obtaining political asylum still pales compared to, say, Chinese, it has grown in the last several years.

In 2012, nearly 130 Mexicans won political asylum – seemingly a small amount, but actually about three times the number who did just six years earlier, according to the Miami Herald.

An example of the type of person who is getting political asylum is Policarpo Chavira, a former bus driver and union leader who told the Herald that he fled Cuidad Juarez in his native Mexico to go to El Paso, Texas in 2011. Chavira told the newspaper he fled after after his son, Edgar, was held hostage until he paid a ransom. Chavira, who now lives in Florida, said that the abduction was the latest of many threats he had been subjected to in Mexico.

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