In the end, President Joe Biden managed to save the America Summit, which was clouded by numerous absences and disagreements, from crashing. With the “Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection” signed by 21 American countries and the observer nation Spain, the meeting of the heads of state of the western hemisphere at least has something to show for it. The agreement, which aims to counteract the regional migration crisis, is considered the most important result of the three-day summit. “We’re changing the way we approach migration,” Biden said. Each country makes commitments and recognizes the challenges that the whole region shares.
The plan has several thrusts. On the one hand, countries that take in migrants should receive more support, also to better protect the migrants. This applies in particular to countries such as Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, which have taken in hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in recent years, but also to Mexico, which has taken on a kind of buffer function by offering asylum to migrants from Central America and other countries and acting as a “waiting room” for refugees provides.
Washington wants to take in more guest workers
At the same time, new legal ways are to be found for foreign workers from poorer countries to work in richer countries. For example, the United States and Canada have committed to taking on more guest workers. According to a statement from the White House, Mexico has also agreed to take on more workers from Central America. The plan also includes a joint approach to border security, including countering smuggling networks and a coordinated response to historical migrant flows across the US-Mexico border.
However, observers are skeptical that the pledges are meaningful and binding enough to tackle the migration crisis. In addition, the question arises to what extent the absence of several countries that are decisive in the migration issue at the summit will limit the effectiveness of the agreement. The heads of state of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not present at the summit. Biden was dismissed from Guatemala and El Salvador after Washington had criticized the two countries for recent democratic backsliding, which was perceived as interference.
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All efforts to lure the presidents to Los Angeles had failed. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele reportedly didn’t even answer the phone when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called him. The presidents of Mexico and Honduras did not come to Los Angeles because host Biden did not invite the authoritarian leaders from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua – countries from which countless migrants come.
The expulsion of the three dictators hung like a dark cloud over the America Summit. Governments that did not boycott the summit used it as a stage for their protests, most notably Argentine President Alberto Fernández, whose country currently chairs the Commonwealth of Latin American and Caribbean States. On Friday, Chile, Bolivia, the Bahamas, St. Lucia, Barbados and Antigua and Barbuda joined the criticism, although Biden was absent. And Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who represented President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also joined in the chorus. Nobody should exclude another country.
China, the laughing third party?
Criticism of the United States shows deep rifts. Some observers say the United States is losing esteem with its southern neighbors, making it difficult for Washington to assert its leadership and halt China’s advance in the region. China has steadily expanded its economic and, increasingly, political influence in Latin America over the past twenty years. It builds roads, ports, power plants and railways in the region, which serves the Asian giant primarily as a supplier of raw materials. Beijing has nothing to do with the problems in the region.
The hundreds of thousands of migrants who set off in Latin America every year do not want to go to China but to the United States. The impact of the pandemic and inflation, which is hitting Latin America’s poor even harder, will continue to drive migration. In order to get to the root of the problem and to cushion the economic and social effects of the pandemic, Biden also held out the prospect of an economic program at the America Summit, which, however, does not appear to be mature yet. The United States is also currently facing more problems than migration.
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