With the Biden administration’s recent move to restrict asylum at the US-Mexico border, a historic opportunity for better migration management in the Western Hemisphere could be lost. To prevent this from happening, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean must once again set an example to the world on how to meet the challenge of increasing human mobility.
In doing so, they will do what is right and necessary to protect our democracies from those who exploit exile and emigration for political gain and to feed polarization.
Very often in America there is a simplistic vision of migration, in which emigrants from the area flee to the United States. However, the truth is much more complex. Think of the nationalities that have drawn all the attention to the US-Mexico border in recent months: Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians. While it’s true that people from these three countries were arriving in unprecedented numbers up until last month, those numbers hide a complex reality that, if altered, could intensify, rather than lessen, activity at the border.
Since the beginning of the last decade, countries across the hemisphere have welcomed millions of emigrants from Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In all, more than seven million Venezuelans and hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Nicaraguans have fled to survive. Almost all have found a new home in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The case of the Venezuelans is the most notorious. Of the more than seven million people who have had to leave the country since 2015, 80% now live elsewhere in the region. Numerically, Venezuelans living in the United States currently make up only the seventh Venezuelan community living outside their country of origin.
In fact, Colombia has taken in almost 2.5 million Venezuelans. As President of Colombia, in the face of unprecedented emigration from Venezuela, I signed the first decree regularizing Venezuelans in my country, setting a precedent for our hospitable response. As a result, my successor, for the first time in history, enacted a ten-year temporary legal statute that has already benefited more than a million Venezuelan nationals. I was moved by a sense of solidarity and generosity that greatly benefited my country. Many countries in the region are doing the same for Venezuelans and other displaced people. Caribbean countries have received a per capita number of Venezuelan emigrants that dwarfs that of the United States.
A father and his son are walking through the Darién Gap (Colombia) with the intention of reaching Panama on October 8, 2022. Mauricio Duenas Castañeda (EFE)
Receiving these communities has not always been easy, nor has it been free from controversy and tension. Systems have always been improvised, and Colombia and the entire region undertook this massive reception with little support from the international community. But the experiences of Latin America and the Caribbean provide important examples that it is possible to find opportunities with unprecedented levels of population mobility and that host communities can accommodate newcomers in an efficient and humane manner.
The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, developed by 21 countries at the Summit of the Americas last year, builds on that legacy of welcome and opens the door to a new and more effective future for migration management across America. The declaration commits signatories to work together to support host communities, promote alternative and legal migration routes, improve humane migration management and enhance coordinated emergency response to prevent migration before arrival
However, the implementation of the Los Angeles Manifesto is threatened by an impulse that is difficult to counteract, especially in the United States: the search for imposed and short-term solutions aimed at dissuading migrants from doing so. The Biden administration’s recent proposal to limit access to asylum is precisely one of those false measures.
On the proposed reforms, the US government appears to be listening to the siren calls for it to move asylum farther from its shores and to “safe first countries”. What should be a cautionary tale for the United States, a full-fledged application of this strategy has already been attempted – unsuccessfully – in Europe. The European Union’s Dublin Regulation has overburdened border countries, introduced inefficiencies in the asylum process, undermined solidarity between countries and undermined public confidence in Europe’s ability to manage migration. And this in the European Union, which is much more institutionalized and has many more resources than the inter-American system.
Any cargo handling strategy this side of the Atlantic would be patently unfair and contrary to the spirit of brotherhood and solidarity demonstrated by Colombia and Latin America. It would also put untenable pressure on countries that have led by example, such as Colombia, which is already showing dim signs of regression. Forcing us to take in larger numbers could make it harder to sustain the policies that have stabilized migrant populations. As has happened in Europe, this would further encourage migrants to turn to smugglers to avoid detection at the borders.
To make it clear that there is a better and more effective way to manage migration, countries across America must step up their reception efforts, as we did with Venezuelans, and deliver on what was promised in the Los Angeles Declaration. In this way we can order much more human mobility in our hemisphere and give all our democracies some much-needed breathing space.
Juan Manuel Santos He was President of Colombia from 2010 to 2018 and is the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.