The US will promote a new regional migration plan at the Summit of the Americas

The American government wants to promote a “new framework” for the management of migratory flows that all American and Caribbean countries can follow, and would like to have it defined for the Summit of the Americas to be held in mid-2022 in the United States.

This was stated by a senior US official during an interview about the IX North American Leaders Summit, which brought together the US presidents, Joe Biden; and Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador; together with the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.

“One of the things that we proposed (at the summit) is the idea of, with a view to the Summit of the Americas that will be next summer, to work with all the leaders of the region towards a new, bolder framework to manage migration. ”, Assured the official, who requested anonymity.

This “regional pact on migration and protection” will recognize that in the American continent there are now “historical numbers” of people who migrate for different reasons, and that it is not probable “that this trend will end” in a few years.

“We believe that in the next decade we will continue to experience different displacement phenomena, and we want to take advantage of this moment” to lay the foundations for how they should be handled, the source explained.

“We have to provide more support to communities that are hosting large numbers of migrants and refugees,” the official stressed.

He recalled that in South America many countries are welcoming “millions of Venezuelans”, Haitians and Cubans, and that now “secondary movements as a result” of the pandemic are beginning to occur, so it is necessary to consider “how to support” those host countries.

The United States also wants to explore the possibility of designing “coordinated legal avenues”, both in the form of refugee programs and temporary work visas, or even the Temporary Protection Statute that Colombia has granted to Venezuelans, which can be a example for other countries, he continued.

The idea of ​​the White House is to give shape to those ideas in the next “six or seven months”, and to be able to reach agreements on “certain pillars” in order to present a “set of principles at the Summit of the Americas”, which will bring together to the continent’s leaders in a US city yet to be determined.

“But we are aware that when a whole new framework is designed to manage migratory and refugee flows, it may take longer than that,” admitted the source, recognizing that the initiative may not be completely ready when the summit begins.

This new strategy will not include new “access restrictions” for migrants to the United States by land from Mexico, the official guaranteed, but it will seek to set guidelines for “more humane border management.”

That will include ideas like “expanding voluntary (migrant) returns and return and reintegration programs,” so that “people don’t have to cross multiple countries to find safety,” he added.