Migration was a key topic last week during the ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, despite it not officially being a pillar of the summit. The key policy that came out of the summit was the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, a set of regional principles that arrange expanded legal means for entering countries and assisting countries affected by migration, humane migration management, and coordinated emergency response.
As representatives met in Los Angeles, a caravan of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers set out from Tapachula, Mexico, which sits close to the country’s border with Guatemala.
“Each of us is signing up to commitments that recognize the challenges that we all share,” President Joe Biden said on the final day of the summit. “This is just a start. Much more work remains, to state the obvious.”
The declaration was signed by twenty countries in the region who pledged that they would integrate migrants within their countries.
“The question is whether this will be implemented,” Yael Schacher, an immigration historian and researcher and deputy director of Refugees International, tells The Progressive. “[But] summits have traditionally been a parade of promises that are never fulfilled.”
Other contradictions remain as well. For example, the declaration does not emphasize the right of access to asylum, but rather the integration of migrants who are already within the countries.
“It is deemphasizing the access to asylum,” Schacher says. “What they are focusing on is asking countries to do more for migrants that are already in the country. Not that they are asking countries to keep their borders open.”
This is also more pressing as the United States continues to maintain the Title 42 protocols at its southern border, which has rapidly expelled migrants under measures put in place to control the spread of COVID-19 by the Trump Administration. This policy has effectively broken the asylum system in the United States.
The Biden Administration attempted to repeal Title 42 in May, but these efforts were blocked by a Trump-appointed federal judge just days before it was set to be removed.
But these measures have done little to deter migrants. As representatives met in Los Angeles, a caravan of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers set out from Tapachula, Mexico, which sits close to the country’s border with Guatemala.
“The caravan is a challenge to border restriction and enforcement,” Schcher says. “This declaration is trying to not speak about free movement and the ability to move between countries and access protection at borders.”
The caravan included Venezuelans, Colombians, Haitians, Cubans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and many African migrants. Their goal was to reach the U.S. border and draw attention to the plight of migrants across the hemisphere. By June 11, Mexican authorities had issued nearly 7,000 temporary humanitarian visas to migrants.
The Summit was marked by the absence of the heads of states of Mexico (whose president had declined out of protest for the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), and the countries of northern Central America, which send the most migrants. Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei refused to attend after the United States raised concerns about the reelection of the controversial Attorney General María Consuelo Porras in May.
The region faces a worsening crisis as migration increases from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and elsewhere. But as Central America continues to fall into a dark authoritarian abyss, U.S. efforts to spur investment and employment are likely to have little to no effect to stop the flow of migrants north.
The Summit also included other announcements in response to increased migration from Central America. Vice President Kamala Harris announced $1.9 billion more in investment for Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to address the lack of employment in the region, which follows previous announcements of planned investment in the region to address migration.
But the reality is that, in the case of Guatemala, as more money has flowed into the country to create well-paying jobs for those who find themselves forced to migrate, there remains little stability for the majority of the population, especially as things grow more dire.
“Its impact on the economy is marginal at the end of the day,” Jonathan Menkos, an economist and the director of the Guatemala based Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies, tells The Progressive.
“On one hand, what is needed are much more comprehensive actions,” he says. “And on the other hand, promoting private investment in a context of the loss of democracy is not a good idea either because in the end it is giving a boost to governments that do not collaborate or have any intention of respecting democracy.”
Guatemala and El Salvador have seen rapid rollbacks of democratic institutions in recent years, which have brought persecution against judges, prosecutors, investigators who have worked on corruption cases, journalists, human rights activists, and others who have spoken out against corruption and systemic inequalities. The number of Guatemalans seeking to reach the United States has exploded in the three years since the end of internationally backed anti-corruption efforts.
Menkos describes the idea of more investments as being “a little insufficient to be able to reduce migration or to be able to try to send stronger messages about how important democracy is and to keep governments away from authoritarianism.”
Among the problems that increased investment in the region finds is the extremely low minimum wage that has barely addressed the increased cost of living that countries like Guatemala have seen in recent years. Added to this, the economies of these countries remain entrapped by an economic elite that resists any sort of competition or progressive change and a political class that has one of the lowest amounts of investment of gross domestic product in social projects.
Exportation of people is among the key solutions to maintain the weary economy that continues to be trapped by the influence of a small minority, as former Guatemalan Finance Minister Juan Alberto Fuentes Knight points out in his recent book, La Economia Atrapada. The continuation of attempts to promote more investment do little to change the economic model.
“These investments only re-enforce the [economic] model,” Menkos says. “A model that expels the great majority of the population.”