Immigration: Biden wants "shared responsibility" with Latin American countries

“All of our countries have been affected by unprecedented migration, and I believe it is our shared responsibility to tackle this issue“, said the American president on Thursday in Los Angeles, where a major regional summit ends on Friday.

The leaders present at this meeting must adopt a “Los Angeles Declaration“covering various commitments or reminders of past commitments, in terms of welcoming migrants and regulating flows.

– 20,000 refugees –

In this context, the United States will welcome 20,000 refugees from Latin America in 2023 and 2024, which, according to a press release from the American executive, would be triple the number of refugees welcomed this year.

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But this remains far from the American promise to welcome 100,000 Ukrainians following the invasion of their country by Russia.

Washington will also release $314 million in humanitarian assistance, mainly for Venezuelan migrants, the White House announced on Friday.

More than six million Venezuelans have fled their country, in the grip of a very serious economic and social crisis.

Neither Venezuela, Cuba nor Nicaragua were invited by Washington, which sparked strong criticism from some leaders and an outright boycott from the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The country, with which the United States has a border of more than 3,000 kilometers that thousands of people in an irregular situation try to cross every day, however sent a delegation.

And Joe Biden hammered that despite the diplomatic tensions, the will to cooperate on this highly sensitive subject was strong.

– Domestic policy –

The domestic political stakes are immense for the Democratic president: the Republican opposition, which hopes to regain control of Congress in elections this fall, regularly accuses him of laxity when it comes to immigration.

Washington asks its partners to “guard their borders more effectively“, to identify “people who are not eligible“to the right of asylum and to strengthen their procedures on this subject, indicated a senior official of the American executive.

Le “Summit of the Americas“, launched in 1994 in Miami and which had not been held in the United States since, is supposed to celebrate a new era in relations on the continent, in particular after the clashes that marked the presidency of Donald Trump.

But it ends, for the Americans, on a mixed record.

Joe Biden thus experienced a real moment of diplomatic embarrassment on Thursday when the Prime Minister of Belize and then the Argentine President criticized him, in the middle of the plenary session of the event, and while he was seated a few meters away.

“It is inexcusable that all the countries of the Americas are not here“, declared the Prime Minister of Belize John Briceno, taking in particular the defense of Cuba and Venezuela.

Despite these disagreements,on substantive issues, what I heard was almost unity and uniformity“, however, then assured Joe Biden, who applauded even the most critical interventions, and shook hands with the leaders concerned as they descended from the stage.

– Made in China –

The United States is worried about the growing influence of China on a region that they have always considered their backyard, and the very strong commercial dependence of all countries, including them, on Beijing.

But the Biden administration has made it clear that it will not take the same path as Beijing, which is investing heavily in Latin American countries and funding major infrastructure projects there.

An anecdote reminds us that China, although its name has not or very little been mentioned in Los Angeles, is unavoidable.

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The American Chamber of Commerce thus distributed on the sidelines of the summit a pretty blue bag filled with gifts supposed to promote American industry. But containing among other things a water bottle and sunglasses…”Made in China“.