Since President Joe Biden arrived at the White House, approximately 10 million undocumented migrants have been detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), unprecedented numbers due to the Democrat’s flexible policy on the border, a situation that has It is generating crises in cities and budgets, which reduces benefits to American citizens.
Hundreds of Americans attended a rally in Boston, Massachusetts, held over the weekend to demand the Biden administration “close the border.” Protesters were calling for an end to border crossings, sanctuary cities, housing for undocumented immigrants and a change to border policies implemented by Biden. The rally also called for helping veterans before immigrants.
The purpose of the meeting is to coordinate “strategies to be able to deal with this phenomenon of migration in an integrated and collaborative manner,” said its host, the Guatemalan president, Bernardo Arévalo.
Blinken “will highlight our progress over the past two years and outline next joint steps to strengthen the humane management of migration,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.
The Secretary of State will also meet with Arévalo and other Latin American officials, he added.
In fiscal year 2023, more than 3.2 million migrants enter the United States irregularly each year, which generates great pressure on Democratic President Joe Biden, a candidate for re-election in the November elections, as he is accused by Republicans and members of his party, to do nothing to end the problem.
Reelection at stake
“President Biden knows that here he has to reinforce the locks and put seven keys in the door because his re-election depends on it,” said Guatemalan analyst and academic Renzo Rosal.
Central America also faces the burden of hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, who travel across the isthmus to the United States after crossing on foot the inhospitable Darien jungle, on the border between Colombia and Panama.
The avalanche of migrants generates security problems in Central America and forces governments to allocate resources to assist them, although in South America there are also countries, such as Colombia, Peru and Chile, where the exodus of Venezuelans causes challenges for their authorities.
The meeting will be attended by the foreign ministers or other high officials of the signatory countries of the Declaration on Migration and Protection signed in the American city of Los Angeles, within the framework of the 2022 Summit of the Americas. However, despite the agreements, the number of illegal crossings into the United States is on the rise.
In recent weeks, Blinken has spoken with the foreign ministers of Mexico, Alicia Bárcena, and of Guatemala, Carlos Ramiro Martínez, in search of a joint proposal for this conference, Arévalo said, without giving details.
“Concrete measures”
More than half a million people, mostly Venezuelans, crossed the Darién jungle in 2023, where criminal gangs operate that assault, rape and kill migrants.
Among the migrants who arrive in the United States there are also thousands of Central Americans, who leave their countries to escape poverty, lack of employment, low wages and criminal violence.
“No country alone can solve this,” Marcela Ríos, director for Latin America of International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization made up of 35 states that promotes democracy, told AFP.
However, “the conference must come up with concrete measures, commitments and budgets” and not mere declarations of good intentions, said Ríos, former Minister of Justice and Human Rights of Chile.
Neither walls nor ditches
Experts agree that tightening rules will not stop migration.
“Punitive measures will not stop the flow migratory”, indicated the independent Guatemalan analyst Luis Linares, and so far the facts prove him right.
“Those who think that putting up walls or ditches or bars will solve the problem do not understand that it is a much more complex problem that needs to be addressed comprehensively by all countries, but also with international organizations,” said Ríos.
What if Trump wins?
Linares views the hemispheric conference, which will be held at the National Palace of Culture in the Guatemalan capital, with some skepticism, as he believes that progress will fall into the void if Trump returns to the White House.
“Any agreement that is reached will be modified or displaced (by Trump) and there will be a tougher policy of containment-repression on the part of the United States,” said the analyst.
“As long as they do not generate more job opportunities, young people, by not finding employment, have migration as their only goal and possibility,” Linares added.
Along the same lines, Ríos said that “northern countries must contribute to financing (programs) to overcome the social and economic crises (in Latin American nations), which are ultimately what are triggering these population movements,” according to your judgment. A burden that would also fall on American taxpayers.
Source: With information from AFP and EDITORIAL
