The Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles will be an important space to strengthen a growth and development agenda for the countries of North America, the Northern Triangle and Latin America in general.
There, the countries of the region will be able to present the importance of the US government, and in particular the Congress and its Republican senators, recognizing the social and economic relevance of immigration reform, the impact of remittances to reduce irregular immigration, the need to release four billion dollars from the Central American Development Plan and the increase in temporary work visas. For the US, the Summit will be a space to promote greater and more effective migration co-responsibility and strengthen governance and governance for development with commitments shared by the countries of the region.
The Summit is a political space to promote effective lobbying in Latin America, but Latin American countries must take a more pragmatic stance. While the US government has had some reservations with some countries in the region, President Biden’s administration has recently taken some pragmatic decisions. On the one hand, it eased restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba and meetings with Cuban officials for better migration management and, on the other hand, allowed the main US oil company (Chevron) to negotiate possible activities in Venezuela, based on the relevance of the country’s oil reserves.
In this context, Latin America’s priority at the Summit should be to convince the US government to promote policies that reduce bilateral asymmetries. This would be achieved by reducing social inequalities based on a social agenda: controlling corruption; investments in the energy sector that promote clean energy, with public interest and greater energy self-sufficiency; greater incentives for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises with an equity and value perspective; entrepreneurship and social innovation policies for young people; and insisting on a migration reform with an impact on labor and social inclusion.
But in addition to the Summit of the Americas, other important initiatives are underway between the United States and the countries of the region, such as the High-Level Economic Dialogue, which articulates economic competitiveness, security and the mobility of people. Under the Biden administration, a new agenda was presented on security and development that impact the northern and southern borders of Mexico and with the countries of the Northern Triangle, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
This agenda seeks to promote solutions to various problems such as security, health, border crossings, migration, development, trade, sustainable energy security and climate change. The challenge of this initiative is to jointly manage these proposals to promote a bilateral and regional relationship where competitiveness, growth and respect for the sovereignty of each country prevail.
A second relevant milestone in this line was the meeting between Presidents Joseph Biden with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the North American Leaders Summit, last November 18, 2021. The meeting was the milestone to strengthen integration and chart a new path in light of complex global challenges.
There, the Mexican government reiterated the importance of migratory flows and mobility towards the United States, in the context of the need for labor in line with labor integration and the expected growth of the US economy. The three presidents highlighted the complexity of the increase in irregular migration in the hemisphere – nearly three million irregular migrants between September 2020 and April 2022 – the largest migratory flow in the last 20 years.
All these initiatives are spaces where countries in the region, and above all Central Americans and Mexico, can pressure the Biden government to demand better conditions in its relations with the northern power. Central American and Mexican emigration will not decrease in the medium term. Wage differences are huge, and the demand for irregular labor in the US will continue to increase due to the growth of the economy in the context of the post-pandemic reactivation.
