LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Joe Biden said Wednesday that democracy is an “essential ingredient” for the future of the Western Hemisphere as he welcomed leaders to the Summit of the Americas, an implicit rebuttal to those who boycotted the meeting. because the authoritarians were not invited.
He also drew stark contrasts around one of the summit’s central themes, immigration, saying “safe and orderly migration is good for all of our economies,” but “illegal” forms are unacceptable.
“We will enforce our borders through innovative and coordinated actions with our regional partners,” Biden said at the opening ceremony for events that run through Friday in Los Angeles.
Biden has tried to soften many of the hardline immigration policies instituted by his predecessor, Donald Trump, and used his first days in office to propose a radical immigration proposal that would have created a path to US citizenship for millions of people. in the US illegally. But he has stalled in Congress and the president’s attention has been largely focused on other issues, including rising inflation and Russia’s war with Ukraine.
His administration insists the summit can succeed despite the absence of several key leaders, as officials sought to highlight efforts in food security, climate and other areas of common interest.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other leaders are staying away because the US excluded Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, all countries that send large numbers of migrants to the US and neighboring countries, because they are run by authoritarians .
“Our region is large and diverse. We don’t always agree on everything,” Biden said. “But because we are democracies, we resolve our disagreements with mutual respect and dialogue.”
He also promised that the meeting would involve “bold ideas, ambitious actions” that would “demonstrate to our people the incredible power of democracies to deliver concrete benefits and improve the lives of all.”
Despite that call for unity, a stark reminder of boycotts came as the president and first lady Jill Biden stood on the red carpet to greet foreign leaders in attendance, and few of those who arrived were heads of state. condition. Instead of the Guatemalan president, Biden shook hands with the foreign minister. She then greeted the Minister of Public Affairs of El Salvador, the Foreign Minister of Honduras and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico.
With immigrants increasingly coming from Colombia, Ecuador and other countries outside of Mexico and northern Central America, Biden appealed directly to leaders whose support is critical to any regional strategy on a complicated problem with no clear or immediate solutions.
His sweeping call for other leaders to work together on migration drew a contrast to Trump, whose unilateral demands for cooperation included a threat to Mexico to close the border and raise tariffs. Many top Republicans are eager to make an election issue out of Biden’s failure to meaningfully address large numbers of people fleeing violence and poverty by entering the US through Mexico, despite the fact that Trump did not offer lasting solutions either.
Biden also told those gathered that “all of our nations have a responsibility to step up and ease the pressure that people are feeling today.”
Among the new programs expected to be unveiled in the coming days are a $300 million food security financing initiative, a new Caribbean climate alliance that will help Caribbean countries access low-carbon energy sources, and a program to train 500,000 health workers in the Americas. for the next five years.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the White House will “invest targeted dollars to produce tangible results.”
“When you add all that up and look at the practical impact of what the results of the US summit will mean for the public sphere, it is significantly more impactful on the real lives and livelihoods of people in this region than the types of extractive projects that China has invested in,” Sullivan told reporters Wednesday aboard Air Force One.
The “Los Angeles Statement,” to be announced as Biden meets with his North, Central and South American counterparts, is a brief call to action that supporters hope will guide countries on one of the most pressing issues related to migration: welcoming people fleeing violence. and the persecution and search for more economic stability.
“We view this as an unprecedented set of statements and actions … to address a hemispheric crisis,” Sullivan said.
the United States has been the most popular destination for asylum seekers since 2017, posing a challenge that has stumped Biden and his immediate predecessors, Trump and Barack Obama.
But the United States is far from alone. Colombia and neighboring South American countries are home to millions of people who have fled Venezuela. Mexico filed more than 130,000 asylum claims last year, many of them Haitian, triple the number in 2020. Many Nicaraguans flee to Costa Rica, while displaced Venezuelans make up about a sixth of the population of tiny Aruba.
“Countries already have to do this, so instead of each country trying to figure this out and figure it out on its own, what we’re doing is saying, ‘Let’s come together in a coherent way and build a framework so that we can all work together to make this situation more humane and more manageable,’” said Brian Nichols, US assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
Biden arrived dogged by questions about how much progress he can make on immigration and other issues when some of his counterparts in the region stay home. The controversy has undermined the start of the summit, hosted by the United States for the first time since the inaugural event in 1994, at a time when China has been trying to make inroads in the region.
It is possible that some concrete measures will be announced, such as the possible financing of development banks. Nichols said in an interview that discussing any specific initiative would be premature, but officials have made it clear the deal will be largely aspirational.
There is widespread agreement that aid should be aimed at the growth and stability of entire communities in which migrants live, not just migrants.
The deal may call for more pathways to legal status, mechanisms to reunite families, more efficient and humane border controls and better information sharing, according to experts who have seen early drafts.
Biden also announced a new initiative, the United States Partnership for Economic Prosperity, to help rebuild the economies of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, which suffered the steepest contractions during the pandemic and struggled with global inflation that followed. .
The administration wants to attract more private investment to those countries, including a renewed focus on clean energy, stronger supply chains and better governance on corruption and tax issues.
The leaders of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, each critical to any regional migration strategy, are skipping the Summit of the Americas, depriving Biden of symbolic weight and unity amid photo opportunities and spectacle.
Leaving for Los Angeles on Tuesday, Mexican Marcelo Ebrard said his nation’s close relationship with the United States has not changed and noted that López Obrador will visit Washington in July.
President Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador said a migration agreement would be an important acknowledgment of what governments are facing.
“(When) you talk about problems and it becomes part of a declaration, of a summit as important as this one, obviously the problem exists, the problem enters the consciousness of those who should be part of the solution,” he told a group of civic. activists in Los Angeles.
__
Associated Press writers María Verza in Mexico City, Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador, and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
Elliot Spagat and Chris Megerian, Associated Press
Reference-www.sudbury.com