Senior Biden administration officials met with other officials from 19 countries from the Americas on Tuesday, September 27, to discuss ongoing efforts to address migration crises. 

In a press release, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall said the countries have launched the process of implementing the “Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection” (LADMP), which was born at the Summitof the Americas in June.

Among the countries that attended the meeting are Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Mexico.

According to TheHill “In their remarks at the meeting, Sullivan and Sherwood-Randall noted the dramatic changes to irregular migration and force displacement in recent decades “requiring new, coordinated regional solutions to meet a growing challenge. […] It added that the countries present “reaffirmed their readiness to deepen cooperation and align policies to reduce irregular migration.”

The LADMP initiative was first announced by President Biden and other world leaders earlier this year at the Summit of the Americas. At that time, Mexico refused to attend the Summit due to the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. While Mexico was present at Tuesday’s meeting, representatives from other countries were not, according to a White House press release.

The Los Angeles Declaration has four main pillars, which include ensuring stability and community assistance, promoting legal migration routes, humane border management, and coordinating emergency response efforts. It also aims to provide an expansion of temporary worker programs to improve the flow of migrants to the U.S. and address worker shortages, as well as expand legal pathways to migration, such as refugee resettlement and family reunification.

However, as we point out in the analysis text of the Latino Observatory “The Summit also had an internal goal: to convince the country's 62 million Latino/Hispanic population that the Biden administration is concerned about problems related to their countries of origin and the impacts of legal and illegal immigration in the United States. The topics discussed were tailored to please the most active currents of the Democratic Party, precisely in a state with a majority of Democrats and a strong Latino presence such as California”.

A White House news release on the meeting noted that the U.S. has “significantly expanded refugee resettlement from the region, including for Haitian, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan nationals” as part of its commitment to the initiative.

“The meeting comes as migration has become a prominent issue heading into November’s midterm elections in the U.S. Several GOP governors have sent migrants to Northern, Democratic-run cities in protest of Biden’s border policies”. notes The Hill.

The U.S. and the other countries involved will convene again on the migration initiative at a Los Angeles Declaration meeting of Foreign inisters in Lima, Peru, on Oct. 6.