March 29, 2024 2:42 AM
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Biden announces regional migration initiative at Summit of the Americas – Cronkite News

President Joe Biden previewed a new migration initiative during the opening of the Ninth Summit of the Americas, calling it a mutual commitment to orderly migration throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration is an “integrated approach to manage migration,” Biden said, noting the initiative creates shared responsibility for handling the migration crisis across the Americas.

“That’s what this is all about: responding to basic human desires that we share, for dignity, for safety, for security,” he said. “When those basics are absent in one place, that’s when people make the desperate decision to seek them elsewhere. All of our nations have a responsibility to step up and ease the pressure people are feeling today.”

Biden didn’t go into detail about how the initiative will work but said the initiative would deter criminals and human traffickers, and he emphasized that “unlawful migration is not acceptable.”

“And we will enforce our borders, including through innovative, coordinated action with our regional partners,” the president said.

In the Yuma and Tucson sectors of Arizona’s border with Mexico, Customs and Border Patrol encountered more than 52,000 migrants attempting to enter the country in April, the most recent data available – a 54% increase from a year ago.

The U.S. isn’t the only country struggling to handle the growing migration crisis.

Before the summit began, a migration caravan departed Tapachula, Mexico, headed for the U.S. border more than 1,500 miles north. Shortly after its departure, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced he would not attend the summit because the Biden administration did not invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Luis García Villagrán, an activist following the caravan, told The Associated Press the caravan is a message to the leaders gathered for the summit. Migrant families, he said, are not bargaining chips to be used for political interests.

Biden also announced the creation of a new economic partnership. America’s Partnership for Economic Prosperity is aimed at helping “economies grow from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down” after the hit they’ve taken from COVID-19.

Biden said he hoped the initiatives will enhance regional stability and create opportunities for safe migration.

“Safe and orderly migration is good for all of our economies, including the United States. It can be a catalyst for sustainable growth,” he said.

Biden and other leaders are expected to sign the migration declaration on Friday, the last day of the summit, which was inaugurated in 1994 and meets every few years to address the region’s challenges.

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(Photo by Reece Andrews/Cronkite News)

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2 Responses

  1. Sleepy Joe should be working on making our borders safer (good grief neither Joe Biden or Kamala Harris have been to the border to talk to the people that work there, to see the reality for themselves, talk about negligence), reducing inflation, eliminating government waste and corruption, so on and so forth.

    Instead, he goes to a conference where people just talk, have a good time, swill down expensive grog and then hand the bill to the US Taxpayer.

    Clown show.

  2. Worldwide and that includes most American institutions have been pushed or led into the philosophy of we all must work to save humanity; world wide. No more successful countries as they are hurting “humanity”. The EU and Southern Europe felt this since WWII as African and Middle East countries began crossing the Med to greater prosperity.
    Every country is capable of prosperity if government is properly motivated to help their people. With foreign aid applied to local conditions and not stolen by ruling parties people will not be migrating. Marxism and one worlders are behind the movement pushed by the UN and the EU. In America, Democrat socialists have captured the federal government and opened our border defying our constitutional republic’s protections. God save the United States of America.

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