The time has arrived for an Americas Migration Accord, an ambitious, integrated, hemisphere-wide effort to bring order to the otherwise chaotic movement of people resulting from a cascading set of crises in the Western hemisphere.
Such an accord is important on its own terms given the vulnerability of populations on the move, but it is perhaps even more important to counteract a sense of chaos that feeds authoritarian narratives assaulting fragile democracies in the United States and across the Americas.
Even before the economic wreckage of the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased poverty by 22 million new poor and 8 million new extremely poor in 2020 alone, according to the United Nations, the movement of populations across Latin America and the Caribbean was intensifying.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians have left Hispaniola since January 2010, according to the Migration Policy Institute, many for countries in South America. At least 4.6 million Venezuelans have fled a corrupt, authoritarian regime since 2015, with more than 85% settling across Latin America and the Caribbean.
As Nicaragua has descended further into dictatorship, more Nicaraguans have fled, most to Costa Rica, but increasingly toward the United States. Cubans, denied access to the orderly channel of 20,000 annual migration visas to the United States that prevailed from 1994 to 2017, are increasingly forming part of irregular channels leading to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Central Americans have continued to flee a failed status quo that treats them as export commodities exacerbated by hurricanes Eta and Iota in late 2020 and the growing effects of the climate crisis.
In the face of this reality, an accord must start from a common understanding of what will and will not help order migration. The lesson from the journey of 14,000 Haitians, most of whom spent years in Brazil and Chile, to Del Rio last month, should serve as a guide. If one of the densest stretches of jungle in the world, the Darien along the Colombia-Panama border, did not deter those desperate people, any system that primarily relies on thickening political borders, at least under current COVID-affected circumstances, is doomed to fail.
Shared responsibility must be at the core of the accord, but not as an attempt to put partners throughout the hemisphere on the hook as countries of first refuge. A similar approach failed in a politically and economically more coherent Europe. It is hard to imagine how it could work in the Americas.
Instead, the accord must mitigate, manage and order migratory flows in at least four ways.
First, it should recognize and build on the region’s success, albeit uneven, in managing the Venezuelan migration with next to no international support. The United States could provide political and financial support for ambitious regularization and integration programs across the region with particular emphasis on countries with significant precarious migrant populations.
Second, countries throughout the region from Canada to Chile should work with relevant UN agencies to enhance protection mechanisms (including temporary ones) for the most vulnerable internally and internationally displaced populations. Civil society is a critical partner throughout the Americas in providing protection and boots on the ground, and must be part of the accord.
Third, both complementary pathways (family reunification, humanitarian parole, sponsorship and others) and labor pathways must be established throughout the hemisphere via the accord. These pathways cannot and should not lead to an exclusive destination; this is a role that can be shared by countries in each subregion and not solely or even primarily by the United States.
Fourth, any accord must include tangible efforts to address the acute root causes of migration, especially for the most vulnerable populations. This includes rallying hemispheric, regional, subregional and bilateral development financing institutions to support jobs programs and other quick-disbursing support for receiving communities; ramping up U.S. vaccine diplomacy; and continuing to focus on governance. It also means taking steps to alleviate humanitarian crisis conditions in Cuba and Venezuela, understanding each as a policy challenge, not a political question, to be addressed.
The diplomatic road to an accord will be complex, but it must be traveled quickly either through a series of subregional meetings laddering up to a hemisphere-wide ministerial before the end of the year, or directly to that emergency ministerial. Next year’s Summit of the Americas should be used to gauge the accord’s progress and adjust as needed. It cannot be used to launch the accord. It would be too late.
People are on the move throughout the Americas; no country can enforce its way out of this reality nor manage it alone. It is up to governments throughout the Americas to mitigate, manage and bring order to this movement before it is too late for those people and for democracy throughout the hemisphere.
Dan Restrepo served as special assistant to President Barack Obama for Western Hemisphere affairs. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.