Here’s what the document says:
https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2022/06/10/los-angeles-declaration-migration-and-protection
Lot of promises, no specifics, as you can see!
Here’s the “White House Fact Sheet” which lists specifics from apparent “side agreements” by the various signatories:
Here’s “critical commentary” from one observer:
Tyler Mattiace, an Americas division researcher with Human Rights Watch who closely followed the declaration’s drafting process, said that this type of multilateral approach is long overdue to assist “the millions of people all across the continent who have fled their homes either because of violence or persecution or human rights abuses.”
“They often face serious abuses that are many times the result of the fact that government either tries to prevent them from seeking protection or make[s] it difficult for them to obtain legal status or implement enforcement strategies to lead to them taking dangerous migration routes where they suffer abuses,” he said.
He said the declaration is a departure from what’s happening on the ground at the U.S.-Mexico border, where immigration enforcement officials keep expelling asylum seekers under Title 42, a COVID-19-related health measure implemented under former President Trump and maintained by Biden. The measure is tied up in the courts.
“The declaration is a major step forward, but it could be meaningless unless Biden immediately does everything possible to restore access to asylum at the U.S. border and ends other abuses, other anti-immigration policies,” Mattiace continued. “The U.S. also has to stop focusing immigration policy on efforts to outsource immigration enforcement to other governments in the region.”
http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=dae611a5-6dfe-4e35-a4df-3329cdc3866b
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I like to be optimistic. Nevertheless, color me skeptical on this.
The ultimate success of this type of initiative will depend on courageous, enlightened, bold, dynamic leadership from the U.S. That’s not currently in the cards.
Right now, the U.S. is in violation of various international migration agreements, domestic law, and the Due Process Clause of our Constitution. Our legal asylum, refugee, Immigration Court, and adjudication of legal status systems are a dysfunctional mess. Proposals for necessary, practical reforms have been ignored by the Administration, blocked by Trump Federal Judges, or not gotten off the ground. That’s NOT a “leadership posture” that is going to inspire and persuade other nations.
For example, the much ballyhooed “Asylum Regulation Reforms” are moving forward in a flawed “Beta test mode,” with no leadership, no practical precedents, incompetent judicial review, and a few dumb “in your face” features (like proposing to relocate asylum applicants to cities in Texas, where the EOIR asylum denial rates approach 100%, a move apparently specifically intended to spur xenophobic reactions from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott).
Here’s one of the “key commitments” from the U.S. taken from the above White House “Fact Sheet”:
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The United States will commit to resettle 20,000 refugees from the Americas during Fiscal Years 2023 to 2024. This represents a three-fold increase from this year and reflects the Biden Administration’s strong commitment to welcoming refugees. The protection needs are significant in the Western Hemisphere. More than 5 million Venezuelans have been displaced in the Americas, and hundreds of thousands more people from other countries across Latin America and the Caribbean are also displaced [across borders]. As the United States scales up its resettlement operations in the Americas, we call on other governments to do the same.
20,000 over two years? (Or is it 20,000 per year over two years — doesn’t really matter?) Are you kidding me? That wouldn’t begin to address the current situation on the Southern Border. Indeed, it wouldn’t even cover all the individuals already determined to have a “credible fear” of persecution who have been waiting, some for years, for processing under the cruel, illegal, and ineptly administered “Remain in Mexico” program.
As Tyler Mattaice from HRW observes, the problem involves millions of individuals. Yet, we’re talking about accepting a few thousand more as a solution? Not going to cut it!
I’d also be mildly surprised if the U.S. even fulfills this exceptionally modest commitment. Over the past few years, the U.S. hasn’t even filled it’s “historically meager quotas.” And, the once proud U.S. Refugee Program, which relied heavily on NGOs for success, has been shredded — intentionally left in tatters by the Trump regime. If the Biden Administration has been able to rebuild it to the necessary size and operational strength, they have kept it a secret from most of us!
A realistic “low ball” starting number for Western Hemisphere refugees would be more like 100,000 in each of the next two years! Even this well might not be enough.
Moreover, a competent Administration could actually have processed and admitted thousands of qualified refugees waiting in Mexico over the past 18 months, thereby at least beginning to reduce pressure on the border and the asylum adjudication system.
Whether folks want to admit it or not, we are going to experience substantially more immigration from the Americas. It could be mostly legal or mostly extralegal — that’s our choice.
But, no totally bogus Title 42 extension, wall, prison, family separation, cruelty, punitive law, prosecution, militarization of the border, racist rhetoric, “don’t come” message in three languages, or Federalist Society Federal Judge is going to halt the natural flow of human migration. Nor can migration be largely “outsourced” to smaller countries in the Hemisphere.
International cooperation is great! That’s what the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention and subsequent 1967 Protocol are all about. But, logically, we can expect other countries to “proportionalize” their responses to what they see the U.S. doing.
Moreover, we have to consider that, for example, Colombia, a much smaller and poorer country than the U.S., with its own set of problems, has already taken in 1.7 million Venezuelan refugees. That dwarfs our so-called “crisis” at the Mexican border. https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2021/10/31/supporting-colombian-host-communities-and-venezuelan-migrants-during-the-covid-19-pandemic
Realistically, is Colombia going to want to help us resettle Venezuelan refugees waiting at our Southern Border? Don’t count on it!
If you “add up” all of the numbers and commitments from all the countries contained in the “Fact Sheet,” it wouldn’t even come close to solving the current flow at our Southern Border, let alone make a dent in the Hemisphere-wide movement of individuals.
Dealing with the “root causes” of migration is also a great idea, if hardly a new one. Problem is, many of the “sending countries,” Northern Triangle, Haiti, Venezuela, are functionally failed states. Unless someone has a “silver bullet solution” addressing this sad fact — and nobody has one to date — this isn’t going to happen in the short run. It’s a decades if not generations long project. Worthy, to be sure. But not a way of effectively addressing today’s realities and migration pressures.
So, I see the same “aura of unreality” and unwillingness to face the facts hanging over the LA Declaration that has crippled our immigration and human rights policies over the past several decades. And, as refugee situations have continued to get worse, so has the “dream world” inhabited by those countries fortunate to be prosperous and stable enough to be “refugee destinations” become more pronounced and increasingly untethered to reality and humanity.
Sorry, but that’s not a “formula for success!”
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
06-12-22
