(CN) — In the second of two speeches at the Summit of the Americas Thursday, President Joe Biden stressed the “shared responsibility” that Western Hemisphere countries have for migration, among other proposed areas for international collaboration.
“Each one of our countries have been impacted by unprecedented migration, and I believe it’s our shared responsibility to meet this challenge,” he said. “And I emphasize shared.”
Biden said that on Friday he and other countries attending the summit will announce the Los Angeles Declaration, a new initiative to address this responsibility.
“This will bring our nations together around a transformative new approach to invest in the region and solutions that embrace stability, to increase opportunities for safe and orderly migration, to crack down on criminals and human traffickers who prey on desperate people, and coordinate specific concrete actions to secure our borders and resolve our shared challenges,” the president said.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne said that the talks producing the declaration will be a chance for the United States and guest countries to “define what those responsibilities are.”
The countries from which migrants originate, for example, have a responsibility to resolve the reasons for which their own citizens flee, he said, whether that be because of an autocratic government, political persecution or crime.
“Secondly, there’s a responsibility of the countries along the way — the receiving countries — to help set up mechanisms to protect people,” said Wayne, who is now a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute.
And as the hemisphere’s largest illegal drug market and arms exporter, the summit’s host country will also have to accept a large part of the responsibility for the migration crisis.
“Countries that are the source of weapons and buying drugs have a very serious responsibility, and I include the United States,” said Wayne, who added that the United States needs to take drug demand much more seriously. This, however, does not excuse governments like Honduras of their corruption, he said.
Yael Schacher, deputy director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, said that the responsibility does not fall equally on migrant-producing countries like Guatemala and Honduras.
“There are, however, certain countries in the hemisphere — Mexico comes to mind — where [they] really could do so much more,” she said, noting the large amounts of asylum applicants in the country and its direly underfunded refugee agency.
Schacher said that both the United States and Mexico need to step up and take their respective responsibilities for the issue.
“The U.S. and Mexico have not had a constructive conversation about how to address asylum seekers, since the U.S. has been so intent on having Mexico keep people away from its border or wait in Mexico,” she said. “That’s certainly not the U.S. sharing responsibility for asylum seekers or discussing with Mexico how to do so in a way that makes sense.”
Such talks could be made more difficult with the absence of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who did not attend the Summit of the Americas out of protest of the United States’ refusal to invite the leaders of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. López Obrador sent Mexico’s foreign secretary Marcelo Ebrard in his stead.
The Biden administration cited the antidemocratic nature of their governments as ground for keeping those countries off the guest list. Despite their exclusion in the summit, a video played at the inaugural ceremony featured children welcoming the people of Nicaragua and Venezuela, but not those from Cuba.
A 14,000-person migrant caravan that set out from Mexico’s southern border on Monday was made up of 80% Venezuelan migrants, the group’s organizer told Courthouse News.
“There’s lots of responsibility to go around, that’s for sure,” said former ambassador Wayne.
Reiterating points from his speech at the summit’s inauguration Wednesday, President Biden also spoke Thursday of increased cooperation between the public and private sectors to mobilize capital in the hemisphere, tackle climate change and create more resilient supply chains, among other issues.
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