LOS ANGELES (AP) – President Joe Biden and other Western Hemisphere leaders are due to announce on Friday what is presented as a roadmap for countries to host large numbers of migrants and refugees.
“The Los Angeles Declaration” is perhaps the biggest achievement of the Summit of the Americas, which was undermined by differences over Biden’s list of invitations. Leaders in Mexico and several Central American countries sent senior diplomats after the United States excluded Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
A set of principles to be announced on Friday, the last day of the summit, includes legal avenues for entry into countries, aid to communities most affected by migration, human border management and coordinated emergency responses, according to a senior official. American who informed reporters before an official announcement. .
This is a project that is already largely followed by Colombia and Ecuador, whose right-wing leaders were well received at the summit to welcome many of the 6 million people who have left Venezuela in recent years. years.
Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso announced last week the temporary status of Venezuelans in his country, estimated at about 500,000. He told a roundtable on Tuesday that his country was paying for the generosity of Spain and the United States to welcome a large number of Ecuadorians who fled more than two decades ago.
Colombian President Ivan Duque received a standing ovation Thursday in an appearance describing how his government has granted temporary status to 1 million Venezuelans in the past 14 months and is processing 800,000 more applications.
“We did it out of conviction,” Duque told The Associated Press, saying he could not be indifferent to Venezuelans who lost their homes and livelihoods and was willing to suffer in the approval rates.
“They were invisible (in Colombia),” he said. “They could not open bank accounts, they could not work, they could not receive health care. They were practically a community with no future. “
Although the measures are not universally popular, Venezuelans have assimilated without great reactions.
“The two most dangerous phenomena are xenophobia and indifference, and I think we have managed to conquer both (in Colombia),” Duque said.
The United States has been the most popular destination for asylum seekers since 2017, a challenge that has surprised Biden and his immediate predecessors, Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
But the US is far from alone. Colombia and neighboring South American countries host millions of people who have fled Venezuela. Mexico filed more than 130,000 asylum applications last year, many of them Haitians, which has tripled since 2020. Many Nicaraguans are fleeing to Costa Rica, while displaced Venezuelans make up about a sixth. part of the population of small Aruba.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that the summit statement acknowledged the regional dimensions of migration.
“It’s a hemispheric challenge,” he said in an interview, highlighting Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica for hosting large numbers of migrants.
The responses from Colombia and Ecuador cannot be replicated, said José Samaniego, regional director for the Americas of the UN Refugee Agency. Every country is different, and migration from Central America is more complicated than Venezuela.
“You don’t want to copy and paste,” he said, “but there are good practices.”