“Shared Border, Shared Future”, to better understand the phenomenon of migration

The Soumaya Museum in Mexico City hosted the event called “Shared Border, Shared Future” organized by the Mexican Council of International Affairs (COMEXI) and the U.S.-Mexico Foundation.

Carlos Slim Foundation (CSF) was invited to participate in the panel called “Opening Opportunities”, moderated by Rebeca Vargas of the US-México Foundation. The panel included the participation of Mario Hernandez, of Western Union; Tatyana Kleyn, of the City College of New York; and Dr. Roberto Tapia Conyer, General Director of Carlos Slim Foundation.

The aim of the event was establishing a dialogue between experts and citizens to help to better understand the phenomenon of migration, as well as the positive and negative impact it has on thousands of Mexican and American families.

Mexico and the United States were born together and grew intertwined. Contrary to what many politicians affirm today, the reality is that the Mexican experience in the US is mainly through citizenship and legal migration. Of the more than 36 million Mexican-Americans who live there, almost 80% are citizens or have papers. In addition, migration is a two-way phenomenon, because Mexico is the main destination of the North American diaspora.

One of the most important programs of CSF is one for the support to the migrants, for which the platform ‘Acceso Latino’ was created. This webpage in Spanish and English offers free of charge online help tools to the Latino community living in States United States, as well as those who have returned to the country in subjects such as:

• Citizenship exam preparation course for those who are eligible.
• Information on the culture, respect and defense of Human Rights that all migrants should know.
• Link with experts to provide free-of-charge legal aid services on immigration issues.
• Psychological orientation for repatriated migrants in the northern border, as well as telephone counselling and free messaging.
• Information to obtain a Driving License in the United States.
• Employee training with more than 125 free online courses to learn new jobs.
• Education tools for all levels like: Aprende.org, Khan Academy in Spanish and Coursera, among others.

In this way, CSF contributes in the search for better opportunities that allow a better quality of life, bringing information and solutions, generating communities, bringing populations closer and breaking down walls.

“The Acceso Latino platform is a community space, where we can link with everyone. The great advantage of these platforms is that we can send the traffic to other platforms and to many other organizations, because the knowledge is not owned by anyone, it is universal, it is of who needs it and not of who has it or administers it,” said Dr. Tapia.