Americas Migration Brief - May 6, 2024
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Table of Contents
Integration and Development
🌎 Regional
IDB has launched FINLAC, an initiative “to promote financial inclusion by ensuring that the most vulnerable people in Latin America and the Caribbean can access the financial services they need,” including migrants. (press release)
🇪🇨 Ecuador
The new “Basic Account Regulation” in Ecuador allows Venezuelan migrants to open bank accounts with a Venezuelan ID or a passport that’s been expired for up to 5 years, a unique policy in Latin America, says WOCCU.
A Fundación Yo Te Apoyo report explores the impacts of shuttered consulates on Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador, noting that it has prevented some from regularizing their status, among other concerns.
🇨🇴 Colombia
The Colombian government is working on preparing a regularization program for the 600,000 or so mainly Venezuelan irregular migrants in the country. Around 350,000 will be regularized through family reunification means, while the other 250,000 will be regularized through special work visas. (El Pitazo)
🇧🇷 Brazil
Latinoamérica 21 explores the role of migrant advocacy for health care access in Brazil, explaining that a National Policy for Comprehensive Health Care for Migrant, Refugee and Stateless Populations is currently being developed, although the progress of the Working Group is unclear.
🇨🇱 Chile
Immigrant unemployment has increased slightly in Chile, reports BioBioChile, noting that labor informality has also risen.
Chile’s new law to establish a 40 hour work week will also apply to migrants, but only applies to those working formally with a contract, notes InfoMigra.
🇵🇪 Peru
An IOM report surveys the Venezuelan migrant population in Lima/Callao and Trujillo, studying their health and HIV prevalence.
🇺🇸 United States
“The Biden administration on Friday finalized a rule that would expand healthcare coverage for immigrants who came to the US as children” and are DACA recipients, reports The Guardian, adding that “the new policy could cover as many as 100,000 previously uninsured Daca recipients.”
An NBER working paper finds that immigration to the US from 2000-2019 had a positive impact on the wages of less educated native workers and “no significant wage effect on college educated natives,” in addition to “a positive employment rate effect for most native workers.”
Amid aging demographics, accepting immigration offers a competitive advantage to the US over rivals such as Russia and China, according to a CNSI white paper.
“A new battleground state poll from Global Strategy Group and BSP Research on behalf of the Immigration Hub demonstrates, yet again, that Americans are committed to a common-sense, ‘both/and’ approach to immigration reform. Two-thirds of voters in battleground states (AZ, GA, MI, NV, NC, PA, WI) want to see a balanced approach that strengthens our border security and also offers a path to citizenship for hard-working immigrant families in the U.S.,” notes Emerson Collective’s Immigration Update.
Asylum, Protection, and Human Rights
🌎 Regional
“The predominance of “birthright citizenship” (jus soli) generally provides a strong basis for preventing statelessness from arising, or being perpetuated from one generation to the next, in the Americas, but the issue still persists in the region,” says the Americas section of the Statelessness Hub, a new resource focused on the topic of statelessness across the globe.
A Journal of Migration and Health paper explores “the right to health of migrants in transit moving across two of the most transited and dangerous borders in Latin America: Colchane (Chile-Bolivia) and the Darién Gap (Colombia-Panamá),” highlighting a lack of access and that “The short-term humanitarian response; illicit dynamics at borders; migratory regulations; and border and cross-border political structures are some of the most significant determinants of health at these borderlands.”
🇧🇷 Brazil
More than 23,000 have been displaced by heavy rains and floods in southern Brazil that have killed at least 37 and left 74 missing, reports The Guardian.
Brazil’s humanitarian visa program for Palestinians allows for family reunion but is limited to direct, close relatives, reports The Intercept, highlighting a case in which one woman “can come to Brazil because she has a naturalized Brazilian brother – as long as she leaves her two daughters and her husband behind.”
Some advocates are trying to change the policy: “Pinheiro states that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could issue a specific ordinance, authorizing the broader arrival of relatives, in the case of Palestinians. This has already been done in the past with Haitian and Afghan refugees.”
🇭🇳 Honduras
A group of 450 families that were internally displaced by hurricanes Eta and Iota and began living in a long-abandoned municipal property are now under threat of eviction, reports Contra Corriente.
🇭🇹 Haiti
“Nearly 260 Cubans are stranded in Haiti amid the spiral of violence unleashed by armed gangs in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and other areas of the country,” reports El Toque, adding, “More than 2,000 Cubans remain in Haiti in ‘different conditions.’”
🇨🇱 Chile
A CIDOB paper explores the protection-related challenges, discrimination, and inequalities faced by LGBT migrants in Chile. (via Forced Migration Current Awareness)
🇺🇸 United States
“The Biden administration is considering bringing certain Palestinians to the U.S. as refugees, a move that would offer a permanent safe haven to some of those fleeing war-torn Gaza,” reports CBS.
“The administrations of US President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador are forcing thousands of people seeking asylum in the US to wait for months in Mexico, exposing them to danger,” according to a Human Rights Watch report focused on the “all but mandatory” use of the CBP One application to enter the US to seek asylum. (press release)
“A ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation drew a straight line between years of U.S. border and migration policies—including “outsourcing” of enforcement to Mexico—and the March 2023 detention facility fire that killed 40 migrants in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Nothing has changed about U.S. policy since; “If migrant deaths would lead to policy change, we would have changed policies a long time ago,” migration expert Stephanie Leutert told reporter Perla Trevizo.” (Texas Tribune; via WOLA)
WOLA’s Adam Isacson highlights stories related to the US-Mexico border and human rights at the Weekly Border Update, noting, “Preliminary numbers published by CBS News and the Washington Post indicate that Border Patrol agents apprehended 129,000 or 130,000 migrants in April, a slight decline from February and March… Migration through Panama’s Darién Gap also appears to have declined in April.”
🇨🇦 Canada
Canada’s government is proposing changes to the “asylum claim system which could speed up the deportation process for rejected applicants from the country,” reports Global News, highlighting concerns that “people’s rights are about to get sacrificed on the altar of administrative efficiency.”
Furthermore, Canada’s asylum system lacks the necessary capacity for the current number of applications: ““The IRB is resourced to handle 50,000 intaking claims a year,” Creates said. “They’re not resourced for the 140,000 that came last year. … To tread water, they need to triple their budgets and their adjudication.””
“Asylum seekers are arriving in Canada in record numbers, sleeping in shelters, churches and sometimes on the street. Reception centres are a more humane approach,” says Maclean’s.
Migratory Institutions and Regional and Bilateral Cooperation
🌎 Regional
Guatemala is set to host a ministerial of the Los Angeles Declaration on May 7th, with 22 countries from across the Americas in attendance to discuss migration. (AGN)
Officials from Brazil, Canada, and the US—as well as Australia, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, the UK, and the European Commission—met in a meeting of the Resettlement Diplomacy Network. Discussions included “providing safety to Afghan refugees in need of protection” and “leveraging community-driven sponsorship models,” among other topics. (press release)
🇲🇽🇺🇸 United States and Mexico
The presidents of the US and Mexico spoke on the phone to discuss migration, emphasizing border enforcement measures, as well as efforts to address root causes. “In the short term, the two leaders ordered their national security teams to work together to immediately implement concrete measures to significantly reduce irregular border crossings while protecting human rights,” notes a joint statement.
“The U.S. and Mexico will increase enforcement measures that would prevent major modes of transportation from being used to facilitate illegal migration to the border, as well as the number of repatriation flights that would return migrants to their home countries,” add AP.
🇧🇷🇺🇸 United States and Brazil
US and Brazilian officials met last week for “their first Bilateral Dialogue on the topic of Migration Policies, Humanitarian Issues, and Refugee Protection,” discussing best practices, including Brazil’s Operation Welcome. (press release)
Learn more about Operation Welcome and Brazil’s response to Venezuelan migration at last year’s special edition of the AMB on the subject.
🇪🇨🇲🇽 Mexico and Ecuador
Mexico and Ecuador are both suing each other at the International Court of Justice over Mexico’s granting of asylum to a convicted former vice president of Ecuador and Ecuador’s subsequent raid of the Mexican embassy. The case will consider if the grant of asylum was “illegal.” (Al Jazeera, Reuters; see also AMB 4/8/24)
Labor Migration
🇨🇦 Canada
CBC highlights calls to “overhaul” Canada’s temporary labor migration program: “many workers with closed permits feel they have no choice but to accept working in dangerous or unhealthy conditions — even if it violates their labour rights — because they can't easily change employers and need to pay off debts incurred making their journey to Canada.” Recent changes to reduce the number of foreign workers allowed in certain sectors have also prompted concerns.
Migrants in Transit
🌎 Regional
The New Humanitarian published a pair of articles on migration through the Darien Gap: one narrating a reporter’s journey through the jungle and another focused on the conditions on Colombia’s side of the jungle, highlighting the role of organized crime and challenging the narrative that locals are criminals and traffickers: “Most of the Chocó department, in which the Darién region is located, lacks even basic infrastructure such as roads or an electricity grid, and more than 67% of the population lives in poverty, according to government statistics. ‘The people here are not criminals. They are victims.’”
🇲🇽 Mexico
“A collaborative effort among several Latin American journalistic outlets documented migrant smugglers’ dangerous but widespread use of tractor-trailers as a key vector for moving people through Mexico to the U.S. border. In Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, an organization called the Cartel de Chamula, whose members are largely Indigenous Tzotzil people and which has been aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel, dominates migrant smuggling operations, the reporters found. Chiapas was the scene of a December 2021 tractor-trailer accident that killed 56 of about 200 migrants whom smugglers had stuffed into its container. The report found that endemic corruption at all levels of government enables the smugglers’ operation.” (Contra Corriente; via WOLA)
Borders and Enforcement
🇺🇸 United States
The restarted practice of inspecting tractor trailers is slowing down commerce at the US-Mexico border and “generating losses of up to 32 million dollars a day,” reports El País.
“In interviews with Eric Cortellessa of Time, Donald Trump spoke about his plans for mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants. Trump would target millions, Cortellessa writes, and would rely on the National Guard — and potentially other parts of the military — ‘to round up and remove undocumented migrants throughout the country.’ Trump said he also would involve local law enforcement. Zachary B. Wolf of CNN further analyzes Trump’s plans.” (via National Immigration Forum)
🇳🇮 Nicaragua
Nicaragua and Angola have mutually removed visa requirements, with some predicting an increase in Angolan migration to the US via the Central American country. (100%Noticias)
🇨🇱 Chile
“The former presidential candidate of the Republican Party, of the Chilean extreme right, José Antonio Kast, has toughened his proposals against irregular migration in Chile… the former deputy suggested that (Chile) build a wall on the border with Bolivia,” reports El País.
🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
“In response to a presidential mandate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the General Directorate of Migration in the Dominican Republic have suspended the processing and issuance of visas, residence permits, and any other immigration applications for Haitian nationals until further notice. Furthermore, the government of the Dominican Republic has closed all air, land and sea borders for Haitian nationals, including the principal land border crossing point between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, effective immediately,” says Fragomen.
🇧🇸 The Bahamas
The Bahamas has removed visa requirements for Ghana. (Fragomen)