The Diplomat
Spain has reached an agreement with the United States to take in migrants whose cases will be processed through legal channels in processing centres that Washington will set up in several Latin American countries.
According to Efe, the announcement, made yesterday by the United States, is part of a series of measures taken by Washington to try to reduce the flow of migrants to its border with Mexico after 11 May, when Title 42, an immigration regulation that allows for the hot deportation of illegal immigrants, is suspended. That rule has allowed more than 2.5 million migrant removals since it went into effect in 2020 under the pretext of the pandemic under former president Donald Trump.
In a statement, the departments of State and Homeland Security stressed that these measures will be implemented “in coordination with several partners, including the governments of Mexico, Canada, Spain, Colombia and Guatemala”.
Specifically, the US, Spain and Canada will receive migrants arriving from processing centres that Washington will set up in countries in the region, such as Colombia and Guatemala, to handle applications from people wishing to emigrate to those three countries. At these centres, they will be able to access some legal migration channels, such as refugee status, family reunification programmes and work permits in the United States.
These facilities will be run in conjunction with “international organisations” and migrants will be able to avail themselves of different formulas to move legally to other countries, according to officials in Washington.
In parallel, Canada and Spain have agreed to receive migrants who are referred from these centres to their territories. “The US is making legal migration channels more accessible from South and Central America as an alternative to prevent people from taking sometimes dangerous routes,” they said.
The initiative is a concretisation of the joint project agreed in June last year at the Summit of the Americas.
