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l June 10 it was closed the ninth Summit of the Americas with some declarations in relation to migration that are intended orderly, regular and safe to benefit economic development
. The first thing that stands out is Joe Biden’s approach when pointing out the principle of shared responsibility and maintain the strategy of border protection against irregular entry, of course with humanity
plus no country should bear the growing migratory flows alone
. The great concession was that the United States will host 20,000 refugees from Latin America in 2023 and 2024, three times more than at present, but it turns out that it is a fifth of the 100,000 Ukrainians that Washington is preparing to receive.
$314 million in new funding was announced for humanitarian aid and development assistance to refugees and vulnerable migrants in Latin America, including a program for Venezuelans who have emigrated to 17 nations in the region. According to data published by the spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Washington invested 54 billion dollars in supporting kyiv (RT).
It was not even considered discussing any strategy that would depressurize the current trend of migratory flows. On the contrary, it became clear that border controls are maintained and, therefore, migration will be stopped. It is evident that there is no political will, the idea of the unwanted invaders
of the global south, linked to racist and xenophobic classifications, easily distinguishable when compared to the actions put in place for Ukrainian migrants. According to the Customs and Border Protection Office, in the first quarter of 2022, 542,000 migrants were detained in their attempt to cross into US territory. The majority are Mexicans (219 thousand 413), Guatemalans (53 thousand 417), Hondurans (42 thousand 172) and Salvadorans (21 thousand 341).
It was unavoidable to put on the table that the sanctions applied unilaterally by the United States to force nations to desist from positions contrary to their interest, who harms the majority of the innocent of these populations, the elites are practically untouched. As the authors Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury point out in their very important article The United States commands the sanctions that kill millions of people: sanctions are weapons of mass starvation, the human costs are enormous and varied and they ruin the economies of countries
. Therefore, if we are going to share responsibilities, the United States must change as soon as possible its sanctions policy that destroys nations, fails completely in its very questionable objectives, but is the cause of enormous migratory flows, as in the case of Cuba and Venezuela, among many others.
With border closures, people traffickers are being favored. According to the World Bank, the fees of the so-called smugglers reached 3,801 million dollars last year, that is, almost 77,046 million pesos, and it is pointed out that these data may be underestimated, both because of the number of undocumented migrants in Mexico , as per coyote costs
( the day 6/12/22).
If it is about migration, the Summit of the Americas in 2022 was a failure, which forces us to seek solutions to the phenomenon in the context of the countries of the Latin American region. Discussing the causes of migration forces us to question the development models that maintain the region as the most unequal on the planet and favor human displacement. Discuss what role unfavorable terms of trade play; the agri-food strategy of the United States, which blocks self-sufficiency and food security in the region, and the conditions in bilateral or multilateral relations in Latin America. These are urgent discussion scenarios, especially when the aim of the White House’s economic agenda is build free trade agreements in the hemisphere
remembering the failed bet that he raised free market democracies
from the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and surely the T-MEC is in mind.
Latin America has an enormous intellectual wealth, theoretical contributions of economic thought for the region, institutions with deep roots in the Latin American socioeconomic reality, only dialogue and continuous regional debate are required to move towards the transformation of this unjust reality.
