LOS ANGELES — The Biden administration wants countries along a dangerous migration route running through South and Central America to commit to expanding their asylum system and enforcing their borders to help address the unprecedented flow of migrants at its southern border with Mexico, in a new regional partnership that will be announced Friday during the last day of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.
“President Biden is asking all governments along the migratory route to establish and fortify asylum processing in each of their respective countries, while more effectively enforcing their borders, conducting screenings and removing those individuals who do not qualify for asylum,” a senior administration official said.
The current rates of irregular migration are unprecedented, U.S. officials have said, and affect nearly every country in South and Central America, as well others in the Caribbean.
Under the declaration, governments will commit to expand temporary worker programs to address labor shortages while reducing irregular migration. The commitments also call for the expansion of other legal channels for migration, including refugee resettlement and family reunification.
The senior official said the administration will increase funding to help countries that host large numbers of migrants and refugees, like Colombia, and work with international financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank to help middle-income countries better cope with the burden of welcoming displaced people.
The United States is also committing to help countries “combat and root out” human smuggling networks that prey on migrants through a large-scale law enforcement effort aimed at dismantling networks across Latin America.
“The Los Angeles Declaration on migration and protection is centered around responsibility sharing and economic support for countries that have been most impacted by refugee and migration flows,” said a senior administration official. “It sets forth a framework for a coordinated and predictable way for states to manage migration.”
While the administration official described the declaration as “ambitious,” it is not known how many countries will sign it or how they are expected to fund increased border security and other initiatives. Several countries that are among the largest emitters of migrants like Cuba, Venezuela and several Central American countries, were not invited to the Summit or did not send their heads of state.
The U.S. official also said that some of the proposed measures, like expanding legal pathways for migrants, would likely require Congress’ approval.
Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera, who served as president of Costa RIca between 2014-2018 during which his nation became a land bridge for migrants, said addressing the historic flows will require more than money but also new laws in the United States “to use the human capital that migration provides in more intelligent and humanitarian ways.”
“Yes, migration laws must be enforced, but this can’t be done violating human rights as some politicians in Texas and Florida suggest,” he said.
Solis said the Biden administration has correctly identified the structural causes of migration in the Northern Triangle of Central America, which includes the countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
“It has also expressed its willingness to contribute with significant financial and technical resources to ease those causes ($4 billion), as well as to support new investments for an additional $3 billion coming from private sources,” Solis said in an email to the Herald. “This is no small thing and should be welcomed and acknowledged.
“Yet, all these efforts will not stop the human flows and therefore require other measures both in U.S. as well as in Central America,” he added.
Support for Haiti
Along with seeking countries’ assistance, the U.S. also will announce new support for Haiti, the administration official said. The Caribbean nation’s deepening political instability, escalating gang violence and unabated kidnappings have added to the migration crisis.
While over 20,000 Haitian migrants have irregularly crossed the U.S.’s southern land border with Mexico in the last 10 months, more than 5,300 Haitians have been stopped at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard since October in the largest exodus of Haitians by boat in nearly 20 years.
The majority are bound for the Florida Keys and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. But they are also washing up in unsafe, overcrowded vessels in the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos and Cuba, while also using the neighboring Dominican Republic as a springboard for Puerto Rico, Mexico and Latin America.
“We recognize the need to expand people’s pathways just in general but also specifically, countries where we are seeing high outflows that are directly related to humanitarian situations and security situations,” the administration official said. “I think the goal is to provide legal channels so that folks don’t have to take irregular means to get to safety or to reunite with family.”
The invitation to interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry to attend the summit has come under fire from some Haitians and U.S. lawmakers. But a number of individuals, including Florida Republic Sen. Marco Rubio, insisted on Henry’s presence at the summit, remarking that the country’s instability is a source of concern throughout the region.
“In Haiti, we continue to work for a transition that leads to appropriate elections that are supported by all the Haitian people,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during the summit when asked about Henry’s presence. “We continue to work to deal with gang violence that is afflicting the country and is doing terrible damage to the Haitian people. We continue to work to try to find ways to support the Haitian people, who have borne more than their share of trouble in the last years, both human and naturally made.”
Since taking the reins of power after last July’s assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Henry has been at loggerheads with members of civil society who want to lead a two-year transition of the country. The deepening paralysis along with the kidnappings and deepening poverty are fueling despair and a new migration wave.
Record numbers of Haitians are are not just showing up at the southern border of the U.S. where they are arriving after crossing a dozen countries in South and Central America and after spending years living in Chile and Brazil, but they are also washing up on the shores of the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico after getting on rickety boats in the largest exodus of Haitians leaving by boat from the island of Hispaniola in nearly 20 years.
More than 1,400 have successfully made it to land since October after washing up in the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico by boat.
The details on what additional assistance the U.S. will provide are scant. But the U.S., which had a bilateral meeting with Henry on the sidelines of the summit this week, is increasingly under pressure to provide more assistance to the country, especially in the area of security where a weakened Haiti National Police has been unable to control kidnappings and killings by armed gangs who now control large swaths of Port-au-Prince. The country is also facing a burgeoning humanitarian and economic crisis.
