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President Joe Biden and leaders of 20 Latin American countries have signed a major agreement outlining how they will bring order and safety to the migration crisis affecting the United States and the Western Hemisphere.
Biden unveiled the accord Friday afternoon at the ninth annual Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, an event that saw major boycotts from central figures in the immigration debate, which could pose problems as the Biden administration attempts to get a handle on the border crisis.
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“With this declaration, we’re transforming our approach to managing migration in the Americas,” Biden said at the summit Friday afternoon. “Each of us is signing up to commitments that recognizes the challenges we all share and the responsibility, the impacts on all of our nations, and that it does take all our nations — and this is [something] I’ve learned by significant experience — it’s going to take all of our nations working together on partnership to address this issue.”
The agreement comes as the number of migrants encountered attempting to enter the U.S. illegally from Mexico rose in April, surpassing all previous records over the past century, an indication of the scale of the illegal immigration crisis at the border.
The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection is meant to “transform our approach to managing migration in the Americas” and “mobilize the entire region around bold actions that will transform our approach to managing migration in the Americas,” according to a White House document outlining the agreements.
The agreement aims to stabilize the financial and economic systems of countries from which migrants are fleeing, increasing access to ways to seek refuge elsewhere, humanely enforcing borders, and coordinating emergency response efforts.
More than 6 million Venezuelans have fled the country in recent years as the Maduro regime took power. Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia vowed to open up temporary residency to an additional 1.5 million Venezuelans, while Costa Rica said it would protect migrants arriving from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Belize agreed to allow Central American and Caribbean migrants illegally residing in the country to apply for legal residence.
The Biden administration pledged 22,500 H-2B nonagricultural visas to migrants from Central America and Haiti and agreed to take in 20,000 refugees from the Americas in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
Canada will accept 50,000 temporary workers from Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean this year and plans to take in French-speaking Haitian refugees.
“The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection and initiatives announced today by the U.S. government at the Summit of the Americas are heartening steps toward a better approach to protecting people in the region who have been forced to flee their homes,” said Refugees International’s senior advocate for Latin America, Rachel Schmidtke. “Now, leaders must translate these commitments into tangible results for displaced people, including through regularization and resettlement.”
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador all signed on, though they declined to attend the summit because the Biden administration refused to invite leaders from nondemocratic nations, including those from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
It was not immediately clear what impact this agreement will have on the flow of migrants heading to the U.S, where border officials intercepted 234,088 migrants attempting to enter the country illegally in April. In the first 15 full months of Biden’s term in office, federal law enforcement officials at the southern border stopped more than 2.75 million people attempting to cross into the U.S. illegally.
Biden had pledged at the start of his tenure to address the migration crisis at the southern border by fixing the root causes that have led millions to flee to the U.S. from Northern Triangle countries. In early 2021, the White House announced several steps to address problems in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, including $310 million in aid and the appointment of Vice President Kamala Harris as the leader of diplomatic talks with regional leaders.
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Private-sector corporations have committed to invest $3.2 billion into northern Central America under a Biden administration initiative meant to improve economic conditions in the region amid mass migration to Mexico and the U.S., Harris said at the summit on Tuesday. She was not in attendance on Friday, instead choosing to attend a Democratic fundraiser in South Carolina.
This pact does not have an enforcement measure or a way to ensure other countries follow through on their promises, a senior administration official told reporters in a call Thursday evening.
