Illegal immigration, the subject of Blinken’s trip to Panama
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken began talks in Panama on Tuesday on a new diplomatic proposal aimed at controlling immigrants from Latin America, IRNA reported on Wednesday, quoting AFP. An issue that has caused much political trouble for Washington in the midst of the Ukraine war.
The US Secretary of State’s two-day visit to Panama is his first to Latin America this year.
During his first visit, Blinken met with President Lorentino Cortizo. Today, he is scheduled to meet with his counterpart from more than 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere with US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Majorcas to discuss immigration cooperation.
“We need to count on working closely with governments across the region to succeed in managing illegal immigration and addressing the protection needs of vulnerable people,” said Brian Nichols, a senior US diplomat on the trip.
According to the latest figures, US authorities arrested more than 221,000 people on the Mexican border in March alone, the highest level in more than two decades in the past month.
Experts have blamed extreme poverty, rampant violence and natural disasters caused by climate change in Latin America, especially in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras.
But the United States has not been the only country targeted by immigration in recent years, and the economic and political crisis in Venezuela has caused more than 6 million Venezuelans to migrate to Colombia as a neighbor.
The US Secretary of State’s visit to Panama is said to pave the way for a Latin American summit to be hosted by Joe Biden in June.
According to a study by the Brookings Institution, given that Latin America is rarely considered a global security hub, the international community pays more than 10 times more for each Syrian refugee than for any Venezuelan immigrant. However, following the war in Ukraine, the country’s refugees in many western regions have also been more warmly received than Muslim immigrants from Syria and Afghanistan.
Biden has also promised to host 100,000 Ukrainian asylum seekers, with few protests from Republicans who are generally opposed to immigration.
“The Biden administration is looking for a regional plan so that no country can be pressured by more immigrants and countries can,” said Jason Markzack, a Latin American expert at the Atlantic Council think tank. Maximize the opportunities that immigrants offer.
Biden has repeatedly campaigned for a more humane approach to immigration than the Donald Trump administration. The courts, however, were forced to uphold Trump’s policy, in which immigrants in Mexico wait for their cases to be heard.
But the Biden administration will end another policy by Trump on May 23 that the United States could deport immigrants without any interviews because of the Covid-19 crisis.