Countries of the Americas join forces to address migration 1:38
(CNN) --
The Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles was at its busiest Friday with a series of high-profile bilateral meetings, but the absence of key players in the United States' attempt to address migration to the border south could be a headache for the White House.
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras play a leading role in the migration issue.
Known collectively as the Northern Triangle, they are countries of origin for tens of thousands of migrants and a key transit point for even more travelers approaching the southern border in hopes of relocating to the United States.
Blinken says the immigration challenges facing the US at the southern border are "beyond anything anyone has seen before"
The Joe Biden administration has been quite focused on these three countries.
Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala a year ago and then this year she traveled to Honduras to congratulate newly elected President Xiomara Castro.
Despite efforts, President Castro and her two counterparts, President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, did not attend the Los Angeles summit this week.
His absence was conspicuous on Tuesday, when Harris unveiled a $3.2 billion pledge for private investment to address "the root causes of migration" in the Northern Triangle.
In her speech, the Vice President spoke directly to the private sector and civil society in the Northern Triangle, touting opportunities in job creation and stronger partnership with US-based companies.
advertising
Honduran President Xiomara Castro joined the leaders of El Salvador and Guatemala and did not attend the summit.
"It's a shame none of the governments are there to talk to her, especially Honduras, but for the most part the current Northern Triangle governments are more obstacles than partners," said Adam Isaacson, director of defense oversight at the Office of Defense. Washington for Latin America (WOLA), and an expert on migration on the southern border.
democratic backsliding
Bukele and Giammattei, in particular, have opened the door to anti-democratic behavior in their respective countries in recent years (the former brought armed soldiers to Congress to pass a budget law in 2020) and relations with the US have decreased since then.
Biden took office after the White House repeatedly criticized this type of conduct.
Biden Announces Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection
"Bukele and Giammattei are actively dismantling democracy and fostering corruption, they are creating the conditions that are conducive to more migration [...] which explains why the Biden administration made the decision to emphasize the private sector," Isaacson told CNN.
Critics of El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, have accused him of authoritarian tendencies.
None of these countries were invited to the State Department's "Democracy Summit" held last December, and several international organizations have raised concerns about corruption, limits on checks and balances in government, and democratic backsliding.
Last week, Amnesty International accused Bukele of having "plunged El Salvador into a human rights crisis" in his first three years in office.
Guatemala's legislative and executive branches "prevent accountability and threaten judicial independence," according to Human Rights Watch.
Castro's predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernández, was extradited to the United States in April on drug charges.
While his government has been more in tune with the White House, he may have decided to skip the Los Angeles summit to avoid upsetting Honduras's neighbors, as well as in a show of solidarity with excluded countries Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. .
And people from those excluded countries are the ones showing up in record numbers at the southern border of the United States.
Nearly 80,000 Cubans arrived at the US border from Mexico between October and March, according to US Customs and Border Protection data, with a record number of Venezuelans and Nicaraguans arriving at the US border. USA in 2021 and early 2022.
Opposing goals
Where the perspectives of the governments of Washington and the Northern Triangle differ most is on the issue of migration.
In the US, stopping migration has bipartisan support: both Republicans and Democrats are actively working to reduce the number of immigrants entering the country even though the US economy needs workers.
But migration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity in the Northern Triangle.
The annual movement of tens of thousands of people relieves the social pressures faced by these governments, and remittances from nationals abroad have become a sizeable part of the economies of these countries.
According to the World Bank, El Salvador received almost US$6 billion in remittances in 2020, Guatemala received more than US$11 billion and Honduras around US$5.5 billion, which constitutes 24%, 15% and 23% of their GDP. respectively.
That means the flow of remittances from immigrants abroad is seven times greater than the investments the White House touted this week.
"These countries have understood the centrality of the migration issue in US policy, which gives them great influence, since they do not see too many threats in distancing themselves from Washington," said Tiziano Breda, a Central American expert with the International Crisis Group in Guatemala.
Biden Administration creates operation to combat smuggling of immigrants to the US
A growing number of Salvadorans leaving the country criticize Bukele's grand vision of "Making El Salvador Great Again," but it is a fact that these economies receive far more investment from their compatriots working in the United States than from any opening. from a large American corporation, a factory south of the border, or foreign aid from Washington.
Migrants who are part of a caravan heading to the US walk from Huixtla to Escuintla, Chiapas state, Mexico, on June 9, 2022.
China's growing influence in the region has helped all three countries move away from Washington.
Late last year, Bukele announced plans to build a new national stadium in El Salvador paid for by the Chinese government.
Meanwhile, Guatemala is considering switching its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in exchange for China's Belt and Road investment program.
As the leaders rubbed shoulders in Los Angeles this week, at least 3,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, which has also been excluded from the summit, crossed the Guatemala-Mexico border north into the United States.
The US and other countries present issued a joint statement Friday outlining a cooperative approach to migration, which will include enhanced protection for migrants, support for countries hosting large refugee populations and combating human trafficking networks. people.
However, with key leaders absent, including Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it remains to be seen whether these commitments will have any potency.