After ordering the start of the South Frontier Program, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said that the immigration phenomenon must be faced with a regional and humanitarian perspective, and with a shared responsibility.

“We are also aware that every nation must do its part,” he expressed. Peña Nieto pointed out that was the reason he ordered better measures to control the problem.

The Mexican President defined the program along five points: Ordering and formalizing the transit through the country, putting the frontier in order and improving security for immigrants, providing them with protection and social programs, have all the nations in the region share the responsibility for the process and a coordinated cooperation between the institutions involved.

Along Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina, he expressed his wishes for a safer southern frontier for Mexico and that the cooperation with Central America would bring forth a new impulse for the development of the Meso American region.

“In the past, the Central American countries and Mexico worked together to put an end to the armed conflicts and bring peace to the region. If we were capable of rising up to that challenge, today, I am sure, we will also be able to improve the conditions of the regional immigration,” he added.

He added that due to its geographical situation and history, Mexico has gone from a country of immigrants to one of transit and return, and that is the reason why, since the beginning of his government, he decided to assume a position of global reach in the subject.

“When the immigrants come to our country in an illegal way, they face additional risks which endanger not just their freedom, but their physical integrity and even their lives. If this circumstances affect the adults, they are ever worse in the case of children and teenagers traveling on their own, without any kind of protection,” he added.

Peña Nieto said that the program has a double aim: To protect the immigrants crossing through Mexico on their way to the US or back to their countries, and improve the international crossing points, in order to improve the development and security of the region.