Leaders across America, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, signed what US President Joe Biden called a “historic compromise” on Friday to ease the pressure of northward migration.
The deal, the central success of the Summit of the Americas in California, pledges Canada to spend $ 26.9 million this year to curb the flow of migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection also includes Canada’s promise to host an additional 4,000 migrants from the region by 2028, as well as a pre-existing plan to incorporate 50,000 more agricultural workers from Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean.
Canada is already a beacon of hope for migrants around the world, Trudeau said during his closing press conference when asked why a G7 country is taking so few additional newcomers.
Carrying more and more people does not address the underlying issues of economic, social and governmental instability that force people to pack up and leave in the first place, he said.
“It’s not enough to just say, ‘We’ll just keep accepting people.’
“But we must also make deliberate and specific efforts to ensure that people do not feel compelled to do so, that the only option they have is to put themselves and their families at great risk of leaving their communities in the lurch. your country “.
Progressive initiatives
To that end, the government has announced an additional $ 118 million for progressive initiatives aimed at improving the lives of people already living in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This includes $ 67.9 million to promote gender equality; $ 31.5 million in health care and pandemic response costs; $ 17.3 million in democratic governance and $ 1.6 million for digital access and anti-information measures.
“Each of us is signing for commitments and recognizing the challenges we all share and the responsibilities that affect all of our nations,” Biden said earlier in the day, with the other 19 leaders at the summit behind the scenes. his.
He blamed the growing migratory pressure on the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was exacerbated by the Ukrainian war and what he called the “nuisance” caused by autocracies in the region.
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Colombia, he said, hosts millions of refugees from Venezuela, while up to 10 percent of Costa Rica’s population is made up of migrants, a problem he said calls for a collective approach to good health and health. the welfare of the hemisphere.
“Our security is linked in a way that I don’t think most people in my country fully understand, and maybe not in your country either,” Biden said. “Our common humanity demands that we take care of our neighbors by working together.”
The $ 26.9 million portion of Canada’s commitment will go to improving integration and border management, protecting migrants’ rights, gender equality measures and combating human trafficking.
4 key pillars
The LA statement is based on four key pillars, Biden said: stability and assistance to communities, broader legal migration routes, human migration management, and a coordinated emergency response.
The White House said it intends to “mobilize the entire region around bold actions that will transform our approach to managing migration to the Americas.”
It includes commitments from a number of Latin American and Caribbean nations throughout, from economic stabilization and humanitarian aid to the “regularization” of migrants living illegally in host countries.
Colombia, for example, has already regularized 1.2 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees, and has agreed to do the same for another 1.5 million by the end of the summer.
Not surprisingly, the United States is doing the heaviest work, including $ 25 million to support countries that are implementing new regularization programs, $ 314 million for stabilization efforts, and a $ 65 million pilot project. dollars to support agricultural workers.
The Biden administration is also committed to resettling 20,000 refugees from America over the next two years, three times the current resettlement rate, the White House said.
Along with funding and resettlement efforts, the U.S. plans to crack down on human trafficking operations, including a new “unprecedented-scale” campaign aimed at disrupting and dismantling criminal trafficking companies in Latin America.