: Biden Administration Cheers New International Migration Agreement. Experts Say It May Not Do Much #WorldNEWS Leaders across the Western Hemisphere signed on Friday the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration,

Biden Administration Cheers New International Migration Agreement. Experts Say It May Not Do Much #WorldNEWS
Leaders across the Western Hemisphere signed on Friday the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration, a robust new international agreement designed to buttress economies in Central and South America in order to prevent waves of new immigrants at the U. S. -Mexico border.
The Biden Administration, which has made addressing the root causes of migration central to its agenda, celebrated the new declaration. Today the leaders on this stage to join together to make what is almost an overused phraseto make a historic commitment, Biden said. Twenty countries signed the declaration.
But migration experts were more sanguine. The declaration is non-binding and will likely only be effective if it is the first of further initiatives, Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a nonpartisan research institution, said in a statement to TIME. It is, of course, hard to know how the Los Angeles agreement will be implemented in practice, he adds. Like many other international declarations, it creates a set of shared proposals that governments agree they would like to pursue but leaves the actual details to later negotiationsThe Los Angeles Declaration will be successful if it is the first, not the final, word on migration cooperation in the Americas.
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Top leaders from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela—nations that collectively account for most emigration to the U. S. -Mexico border—did not even attend the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles this week, and most were not expected to sign the declaration at all. Without those leaders buy-in, the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration mostly only impacts countries that have already received migrants. According to the White House, the U. S. , Mexico, and Canada have so far assumed most of the responsibility to increase legal pathways for migration.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is spearheading the Biden Administrations effort to address root causes of migration, said in a June 8 speech at the Summit on Thursday that private sector investment is necessary to achieve longterm goals in Central America. When I think about all the challenges we face in the Western Hemisphere, I know they will require new and innovative coalitions between the public and private sectors, she said. We continue to see corruption, migration flows, and democratic backsliding, and violence. These issues effect all of us, and the solutions then must involve all of us.
Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at MPI, who spoke to TIME from the Summit in Los Angeles, said the Administrations project, which has been underway for more than a year, can claim some success.