Just a few months ago, humanity witnessed how a virus about a thousand times smaller than the size of a human hair brought the world to a standstill. The pandemic stopped the economy, closed borders and forced populations of entire countries to take refuge in their homes. And still, more than 282 million people emigrated, 3.6% of the world’s population. The record for migrants on the planet was broken in 2020, as it happened in 2019, the year before and the year before. America was no stranger to that trend. In the last fiscal year, between October 2020 and September 2021, more than 1.7 million people were arrested trying to reach US soil, the highest number since official records began in 1960. The migratory phenomenon continues being a headache for the countries of the continent, with increasingly dangerous routes and increasing political challenges. For Amy Pope, Deputy Director General for Management and Reform at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), one thing is clear. “The solution to migration is not at the border of the United States,” he says in an interview. “Mexico cannot respond alone, the US cannot respond alone,” he adds, “the governments of the region have to find collective solutions.”
Pope took over last September as the number two of the IOM after being the main adviser of the Government of Joe Biden on migration, one of the most criticized flanks of his Administration. The advisor who spoke into the president’s ear advocates a pragmatic approach, more attached to organizational and conflict resolution theory than to the bombast of media speeches. He wields his arguments precisely in a low voice, almost whispering. Her new position took her away from the corridors of the White House (she has just made a lightning tour of Mexico, Colombia and the Panamanian Darien) and prevents her from making sharp pronouncements on the politics of her country. That, however, does not prevent me from giving a brief diagnosis of why the migration crisis has been one of the most complicated issues for a government that seems to find no formula to deal with the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of people.
Pope refers to a term that is difficult to translate into Spanish: weaponization, a war metaphor to define how a concept, idea or situation is used as a tool or weapon to achieve a political end or personal benefit. “We have seen how in the past Administration immigration policy has been used as a weapon, used very effectively to divide the American population,” he says, “that took root, it did not go away because of the fact that Biden was elected president. ”.
The official adds that it is not an exclusively American phenomenon, but has spread to Europe and South America, when anti-immigrant speeches and xenophobia are stirred or when migrants become bargaining chips in clashes between countries, as has happened. between Belarus and the European Union, in the NAFTA renegotiations or with thousands of asylum seekers stranded by the program known as Stay in Mexico (MPP). It is in these scenarios where, “migrants become weapons in conflicts between states,” he says.
The unprecedented arrests on the southern border of the United States are a recurring argument among critics who believe that Biden has failed to separate himself enough from Donald Trump’s policies, although Pope does not see it that way. “I think that, in fact, this may be fueled by the feeling that the policies are less strict,” he revira. “We had a change of government in the United States and we went from an Administration that was very anti-immigrant to another with a more tolerant point of view. That change of government happened at the same time as the covid and very serious natural disasters in Central America and Haiti, “he argues,” we have to see it as a confluence of factors. To that list he also adds food insecurity, political instability, violence and climate change.
His commitment from the IOM is to promote new channels for regular emigration, with differentiated escape valves for economic migrants and for climate change, refugees fleeing violence and asylum seekers to avoid bottlenecks. His insistence is also to abandon the vision of crisis management and advocate for a new approach to the problem, more in line with prevention strategies than reactive. “It is true that when you receive a significant number of migrants who arrive suddenly through irregular channels, pressures are created that governments and officials have to deal with,” he explains. “But if we treat each migratory flow as a crisis, that diminishes the political space you have to reach sensible solutions and officials begin to react politically rather than strategically,” he says.
“I think we put too much focus on the caravans as if it were a major problem, but the major problem is what is happening in the countries of the region and that makes migrants feel obliged to leave,” he exemplifies. “There has to be a change in the way we think about migration,” he says.
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