United States and Latin America seek to harmonize fight against illegal immigration

The summit of the Americas, which ended Friday in Los Angeles, however, did not allow the Biden administration to display a united front with its southern neighbors.

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Better manage “an unprecedented migration crisis” by sharing the burden: this ambitious objective, translated by few specific announcements, concluded the ninth edition of the Americas Summit, Friday, June 10 in Los Angeles. This diplomatic meeting was to be used to relaunch relations between the United States and the countries further south of the continent, very damaged under Donald Trump, and little cultivated since the start of Joe Biden’s mandate. If the diagnoses are shared, the collective momentum hardly seems obvious, any more than the training capacity of the United States. However, the crisis is there, in all its forms.

In addition to permanent convulsions in Haiti or climate change, nearly six million people have left Venezuela in recent years, causing replicas in neighboring countries, suddenly subject to extraordinary pressure. Washington no longer wants these regular scenes on the border with Mexico, where thousands of exhausted people flock from the south to claim asylum, placing the American administration in the face of the contradictions of its migration policy. Latin American and Caribbean countries have a more ambiguous attitude: illegal immigration is a unique pressure tool on the United States. In addition, the diaspora represents a source of income, returning money to the country.

Published Friday and signed by 20 States, a common non -binding text, called Los Angeles Declaration, validates the principle of “shared responsibility”, in the words of Joe Biden, between countries of origin and the final destination migrants. Washington highlights the importance of this collective vision. The states concerned undertake to strengthen border controls and to review their asylum procedures. Colombia has recently announced that it would offer a legal status at 1.7 million venezuelans.

The United States, for their part, agreed to accommodate 20,000 refugees from Latin America in 2023 and 2024, an effort multiplied by three, but far from the 100,000 Ukrainians that the Biden administration has promised to ‘Accept in the country. Washington will also unlock $ 314 million in humanitarian assistance, mainly for Venezuelan migrants. Finally, the Biden administration, which is highly criticized on this subject by the Republicans, announced the conduct of a vast operation to combat trafficking networks, in several countries.

 The representatives of the governments participating in the top of the America pose for a family photo in Los Angeles, June 10, 2022. The representatives of the governments participating in the summit of the America pose for a family photo in Los Angeles, June 10, 2022. Frederic J. Brown/AFP

in rupture with the era of the agreements of agreements free trade, Joe Biden hoped to apply to the Latin American subcontinent his familiar reading grid: that of a coalition of democracies, beyond their particular national features, against authoritarian regimes. In Europe, this coalition was dramatically strengthened against Russia, due to its military assault in Ukraine. At the end of May, Joe Biden made a visit to South Korea and Japan, to stage a common front in the face of Chinese ambitions in Asia. But this score did not have the same success with the neighbors of the South, always suspicious with regard to American ambitions, quick to see a hidden hegemonic design.

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/Media reports.