Latin American Diplomats: U.S. Lacks Authority to Seek Help on Venezuela Migrant Crisis
Latin American Diplomats: U.S. Lacks Authority to Seek Help on Venezuela Migrant Crisis
The challenge of finding third countries in the hemisphere to take in migrants is a long-standing one for the United States, says AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth.
Latin American diplomats say the United States lacks moral authority to encourage the region to take steps it’s unwilling to take in the Venezuelan migration crisis because of the Trump administration’s own border policies, according to more than a half-dozen current and former diplomats and officials in Latin America and Washington.
Latin American diplomats applaud the United States’ latest $6 million contribution in aid for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, but they say the Trump administration could do more to build a regional coalition, offer more resources _ and relax some of his policies to take more migrants.
“It’s contradictory when asking for this and then in your own backyard they’re separating families,” said one Latin American diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because the diplomat was not authorized to publicly discuss U.S. policy. “I don’t understand it. All of us who are up-to-date on the migration issue understand it’s radical and contradictory to do one thing with one hand and do something else with the other.”
