Circular migration is win-win-win….
It’s part of a unique collective regional approach to managing migration in the Americas
Migration policy has been a challenging issue in US politics for quite some time now, and positive stories - especially about policy - seem rare. So when I read about how Guatemala’s circular migration offers legal, safer pathways for workers to make a living in the US and support their home communities, my ears perked up.
Then, as I started to read more about circular migration, I learned about major shifts in migration policies in the Americas that happened following the COVID epidemic. And I was puzzled that I did not know this, because the agreements between countries in South, Central and North America to work together collaboratively on a more constructive approach was not something I had heard of.
So that was the impetus for this post - because I don’t think I’m alone in this lack of awareness.
Firstly, to explain about ‘circular migration’. It is the legal way for Guatemalans to travel to the US to work temporarily, using an H-2A visa issued by the US,, as opposed to the dangerous and expensive illegal migration pushed by the ‘coyotes’, who increasingly are part of organized crime. There are similar program in Canada and Spain.
The Guatemalans who work temporarily in North America are happy to live in their home country but find it almost impossible to earn a living there. Spending time in the US, however, means they earn money which lets them create businesses back in Guatemala, so they can stay at home. And they also help US communities meet their temporary labour needs as well.
This wonderful El Pais story begins with an illustration of how this happens:
“From his blackberry field, Arnoldo Chile looks at the Agua volcano with the peace of mind of someone who is exactly where he wants to be. He is 33 years old and has everything he has always dreamed of. He has his own land and a house that he shares with his wife in the village of El Rejón, near Sumpango, about one hour from Guatemala City. With an H-2A visa for agricultural workers in hand, Arnoldo has been back-and-forth to the United States since 2016. Every year, he spends eight months in California, where he works in the logistics of an agri-food company, and four months in Guatemala, where he takes care of the blackberry field he bought with his remittances.”
“In the village of Rancho Alegre, on the other side of Sumpango, Roselia Canel looks out the window of her room while embroidering a güipil. She thinks that she will soon have enough money to build a fashion workshop on the land she has just purchased. On the outskirts of the city, Juan Pacache and his wife are spreading fertilizer on their snow pea plantation, while, 15 kilometers away, in Santiago Sacatepéquez, Vilma Lemus is serving the last customers of the day at her fruit and vegetable stall.”
“The three worked as farmers in floriculture in South Dakota for a few months in 2023. “I earned around $4,000 a month. After four months of work, I saved enough to buy land and help my family with daily expenses,” explains Canel. The seamstress is convinced that if she manages to return to the United States three more times, she will be able to open her own embroidery business.”
About 9,000 Guatemalans travelled to the US in 2022 legally to work temporarily. “Of these, 2,982 arrived with the H-2A agricultural visa, and 5,999 came with the H-2B to temporary non-agricultural workers. All had been selected by private recruiters or through the Labor Mobility Program run by the Guatemalan Ministry of Labor.”
In 2023, the 150 workers sent to the US by the Cuatros Pinos Cooperative sent home $1.5 million in remittances, which was invested in production in Guatemala. Remittances increased by almost 11.5% in the first eight months of 2023 compared to 2022, and represented almost 19% of Guatemala’s GDP.
“Temporary migration allows workers not to put their lives at risk along the way. They do not have to pay the debt to the coyote and they manage to maintain family ties because they return in a few months,” says Vanessa Garcia, head of the co-op’s social responsibility..
I was surprised, in researching circular migration, to discover that Canada has a labour migration program for Guatemala workers. The Canada/Guatemala Temporary Guest Worker Program was created in 2003 and originally regulated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). By 2010, IOM had worked with 12,000 Guatemalans, mostly in agriculture but also in poultry, construction, dairy, landscaping, and laundry services. Since 2010, it falls under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and recruitment has been facilitated by Canadian provincial governments and the Guatemalan organization Amigo Laboral.
Circular or temporary migration is part of a more collaborative approach to managing migration that was adopted by most nations of the Americas following the COVID epidemic.
A new approach to managing migration
In mid-2023, the US, Spain, and Canada said they planned to deepen engagement in Latin America by promoting safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration, creating economic and social opportunities, and strengthening development options for Latin Americans.
It might seem unusual for Spain to be a part of this agreement, but there are powerful connections flowing from language and culture with Latin and Central America. Between 2019 and 2022, it received more than 300,000 applications for asylum.
Under the trilateral pact, Spain has signed bilateral agreements with the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala to work together on regular migration. In 2023, circular migration programs brought around 2,000 seasonal workers to Spain. Under another agreement, 3,000 high-skilled workers from Colombia and Central America countries arrived in Spain in 2022.
In 2022, the US issued 15,102 H-2B (non-agricultural) visas, and 3,923 H-2A (agricultural) visas to workers from northern Central America, doubling those issued in 2021. It pledged to issue more than 25,000 H-2 visas in 2023 and endeavor to increase those numbers by at least 10% in 2024 (contingent upon employer demand). It also pledged up to $65 million for a program for agricultural employers that would expand the pool of H-2A workers from northern Central America, while also improving working conditions.
The impact of COVID
All of this grew from a dramatic new collaborative approach to managing migration that followed the disastrous impact of the COVID epidemic on the Americas as a whole. The report explains:
“By June 2022, 6 million Venezuelans had fled their country. Today {2024}, that number has reached 7.7 million, making Venezuela’s refugee and migration crisis the largest in the world, outpacing even Ukraine and Syria. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, most displaced Venezuelans settled in South America. When public health orders were lifted and borders reopened in 2021, this fundamentally changed.”
As the pandemic hit Latin America and the Caribbean hard, migrants were among the first to lose their jobs. Venezuela’s economic situation went from bad to worse, causing millions more to flee the country, and other South American countries hosting the majority of Venezuelans also suffered major economic hardships. From 2019 to 2021, Colombia’s per capita GDP contracted by 4.6%, Peru’s by 5.3%t, Ecuador’s by 2.8%, and Brazil’s by 11.7%. Meanwhile, North American economies rebounded quickly. From 2019 to 2021, the US economy grew by 8.38% and Canada’s by 13.1%, generating more jobs than could be filled by existing residents..
Prompted by drug cartels which saw human trafficking as yet another economic opportunity for them, migrant populations started to brave the Darien Gap, the dense jungle between Panama and Colombia that separates South and Central America. Soon, nearly every country in the region was overwhelmed.
In September 2021, around 15,000 Haitians moved north from Brazil and Chile, through the Gap, across Central America and Mexico, to the remote US border town of Del Rio, Texas. Most of the Haitian migrants had settled in South America after the 2010 earthquake but, like their Venezuelan counterparts, were among the first to lose their jobs during and after the pandemic.
In the wake of Del Rio, US president Joe Biden’s national security team drafted a proposal for a regional migration framework pact. It recognized that more economic support for frontline migrant host countries was essential to stabilize migration and prevent secondary movements, and that there was a need to expand formal immigration pathways and increase border enforcement across the region. (By 2024, this three-pronged approach also was starting to shape the global response to migration as in June 2024, at the G7 Summit in Italy, the world’s top economic leaders adopted it.)
In 2022, the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection (LA Declaration) offered a collective answer to this challenge, and in the US, “signaled a shift from the traditional focus on the U.S.-Mexico border to a hemisphere-wide approach to managing migration”, says a recent report on implementation of the LA Declaration.
Twenty-one - two-thirds of the 31 countries that attended the 2022 Summit of the Americas - signed on. “Reaching that level of consensus on a topic as politically sensitive as migration far surpassed initial expectations in the White House,” the report noted. The declaration built on existing sub regional migration frameworks like the Quito Process and the South American Conference on Migration, and international commitments.
In April 2022, US vice president Kamala Harris convened 16 Caribbean leaders in preparation for the Summit of the Americas. In Los Angeles, she met them again. These two events generated a slate of Caribbean endorsements, including Barbados, Belize, Haiti, Jamaica, and Guyana.
Among steps taken so far to implement the LA Declaration.
The US will expand public awareness of the CBP One™ mobile app among migrants seeking to enter the US. From January 2023 through the end of March 2024, more than 547,000 individuals used CBP One™ and presented themselves to a port of entry for processing, instead of turning to smugglers.
The Countering Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Action Package Committee, led by the US, is coordinating international efforts to target, investigate, arrest, and prosecute human smuggling organizations preying on vulnerable migrants.
Partner countries reaffirmed their commitment to stem extra continental irregular migration through increased use of transit visas, passenger vetting, and enforcement measures against those who profit from irregular migration.
Already, over 21,000 individuals have been approved to resettle safely and legally in the US through the Safe Mobility Offices in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador.
USAID’s new regional labor mobility initiative — “Alianza de Movilidad Laboral para las Américas” or “Labor Neighbors” — will increase access to legal temporary labor pathways for new migrant-source and destination countries. It will work with international organizations and others to provide technical assistance to countries across the region to identify eligible workers to meet pressing labor needs.
I am puzzled….
I have to say that I am puzzled, greatly, that so many US Republicans - and their presidential and vice-presidential candidates - never seem to speak about the Los Angeles Declaration and regional agreement on managing migration, but keep talking about deporting millions of people living in the US without formal permission.
People who study the remittances that ‘unauthorized’ migrants send home to their families say that making these migrants legal citizens would cost less than they already pay in taxes to the US and state governments. But entirely apart from that, there is a great need for the labour of people who come from other countries if the US economy is going to continue to grow. This is especially true when there is competition for their labour.
Not only is circular migration effective for Guatemalans, their country, and US employers, it is much cheaper than the US and Mexican costs of addressing the illegal migration from which only ‘coyotes’, who are often criminals, are making money. In 2023, El Pais reports, 55,302 Guatemalans were deported from the US by air, 19,665 from Mexico by land, and 222,085 detained in the attempt to irregularly cross into the US. A coyote on average charges an irregular migrant $7,500.