El Salvador Imposes $1,000 Tax on Indian, African Travelers to Stop U.S.-Bound Migrants

El Salvador imposed a $1,000 airport tariff fee on travelers from India and Africa this week in an effort to curb the use of the Central American nation as a bridge destination for nationals from those areas seeking to illegally migrate to the United States.

The number of cases of U.S.-bound migrants landing in El Salvador’s airports to eventually arrive in Nicaragua and travel to America has increased significantly in the past year, Manuel Orozco, the director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, said. The communist Daniel Ortega regime in Nicaragua is not only profiting from the United States’ migrant crisis, but reportedly trying to use migrants as a “weapon” against the United States and leverage for potential sanctions relief.

Proceeds from the new fee, which went into effect on Monday, will be used to improve and modernize the nation’s main international airport, according to the The Autonomous Port Executive Committee (CEPA), the nation’s port, airport, and railroad authority.

CEPA informed on its website that it has registered an increase in the number of inbound, outbound, and connecting Indian and African passengers at the airport compared to previous years.

“El Salvador, due to its strategic position, is a HUB for one of the most important airlines in the region, with direct connections to more than 30 destinations in 14 countries,” CEPA’s statement reads.

The new measure will force Indian nationals and citizens from over 50 African nations to pay a mandatory $1,000 in “Airport Improvement Fees” — plus an additional 13 percent in taxes — to travel to El Salvador. CEPA has also instructed airlines to issue daily detailed reports on passengers from the countries affected by the measure.

In recent years, illegal migrants have opted to use El Salvador and Nicaragua for their route towards the United States, as it allows them to avoid the deadly Darien Gap jungle trail located between Colombia and Panama that many illegal migrants nonetheless continue to use.

Salvadoran newspaper El Mundo reported on Thursday that in the case of African migrants their path to the United States starts with taking a flight from their native countries to Madrid, Spain. From there, they arrive in El Salvador through either a direct flight or one with a stopover in Colombia.

From El Salvador, the migrants take a flight to Managua, Nicaragua, where they continue their route north to the United States. Nicaragua does not have any sort of visa requirement for African and Indian nationals.

According to exiled Nicaraguan journalist Miguel Mendoza, in the past eight to nine months, 70 percent of passengers on inbound flights to Managua from El Salvador were African nationals.

In Nicaragua, the communist Ortega regime has been allowing migrants from Haiti and from African and other nations to freely pass through Nicaragua on their way to America.

Last week, Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa reported that, according to Nicaragua’s airport authority, 23 flights from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and other nations were scheduled to arrive on October 21 alone. All together the flights would carry a total of anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 travelers daily, hundreds of whom came on inbound flights from El Salvador.

The communist Ortega regime has been accused of profiting from the U.S. migrant crisis, much as it profits from remittances sent by exiled or banished Nicaraguans to the country.

Orozco at the Inter-American Dialogue denounced this week that, in the case of Haitian migrants, the Ortega regime charges $200 per person to use Managua’s international airport, adding that 60 percent of Haitians arriving in the United States have passed through Managua.

“Faced with such a large mobility of people in a context where this year there are 2.5 million migrants, Nicaragua is facilitating almost 10 percent of that migration in exchange for remuneration, but also seeks to increase the huge problem that migration represents,” Orozco said on Tuesday.

“The accounting we have done is 268 flights, 275 if we count the last few days, and we are talking about 32 thousand passengers on average who have arrived in Nicaragua via Port-au-Prince,” Orozco added. “We are talking about 7 thousand or 8 thousand passengers, some even stay for a while to do their shopping or whatever and proceed on their route to the United States.”

Orozco asserted that the Sandinista regime has turned migration into a weapon, adding he has no doubt that Nicaragua’s promotion of migration “constitutes a form of aggression” against the United States. Orozco also warned that dictator Daniel Ortega is seeking to use migration as a bargaining tool to negotiate sanctions relief with the United States.

“Nicaragua promotes free passage to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Africa. By air, sea and land. Migration for him [Ortega] is not a problem, it is a golden opportunity,” Orozco stated.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele met with U.S. Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols on Wednesday. Nichols, who will be in El Salvador until Friday, discussed the subject of migration with Bukele along with other issues ranging from security cooperation, bilateral cooperation, and investment.

“We discussed El Salvador’s support for the international mission in Haiti, efforts to promote foreign direct investment in El Salvador, bilateral cooperation on rule of law and mutual efforts to address irregular migration,” Nichols posted on his Twitter account on Thursday.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.