After months of negotiation, Mexico and the United States announced on Wednesday their official proposal to try to stop irregular migration from Central America. The solution agreed by both countries is the Sembrando Oportunidades initiative, a scholarship and training program for young people from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to find stable employment in their countries of origin. Similar to the controversial Sembrando Vida, implemented in Mexico by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it will prioritize agricultural activities. The main challenge of the program will be to face a migratory crisis that has reached record numbers this year.
In the first data shared by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations, Sembrando Oportunidades aims to reach more than 500,000 “youth at risk” in Honduras, where the program will begin. Through the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (Amexcid) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), “skills and experience will be provided to young people with the purpose of leading them to long-term employment, reducing the risk of irregular migration, “says the statement, which does not specify what budget each country has allocated for this initiative. “It will cover additional agriculture and youth workforce development activities depending on the availability of funds.”
In Honduras, the measure will also be complemented by another of López Obrador’s star programs: it offers scholarship opportunities to those who are already part of Young People Building the Future. In El Salvador, assistance will be carried out through the Scholarships for Educational Opportunities initiative, funded by the United States and the International Organization for Migration. The statement does not specify any specific action for Guatemala.
Mexico had been pressing its neighbor to the north for months to increase investment in Central America. The two countries share objectives, but have differences on the method of dealing with the emergency. The United States is not in favor of direct disbursement and traditionally makes the delivery of aid contingent on the performance of the beneficiary governments and the information and monitoring of the use of those funds.
Since US Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Mexico and Guatemala in early June, teams from both countries had been working on an agreement. Migration has become one of the main headaches of the Joe Biden Administration. Just a couple of months ago, the US government dismantled a camp of thousands of people, mostly Haitians, in the town of Del Río. The migrants were hunted, expelled and returned to their country, and Biden had to apologize for the “outrageous” treatment.
This year migration records to the US have been smashed: from October 2020 to September 2021 there were 1.7 million arrests at the border. It is the largest number ever recorded. The vast majority of arrests were of Mexicans (608,000), but they were followed by citizens of the Northern Triangle of Central America: 309,000 Hondurans arrested, 279,000 Guatemalans and 96,000 Salvadorans. Another 367,000 migrants from various countries in the region, including Haiti and Venezuela.
61% of these migrants were expelled hotly thanks to the so-called Title 42, an emergency measure that Trump instituted in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, which allows the rapid deportation of those who arrive without papers on US lands and that the Democrats have left in force. Biden had promised to regularize 11 million migrants, many of whom were considered essential workers during the pandemic. The measure is still pending.
This program supports the bet of President López Obrador. A staunch defender of this type of program, the Mexican president has invested a large part of his budget on them. However, the results are still inconclusive. An investigation published this week in The universal It revealed, for example, that the Sembrando Vida program had contributed to the deforestation of the jungle in Quintana Roo. Now, its Central American version Sembrando Oportunidades will be in charge of facing one of the great crises in the region.
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