Late last week, Vice President Kamala Harris’ “Root Causes” strategy for addressing migration stemming from Central America was finally released. Of the 20-page document, only 14 pages actually address the strategy, overall providing a rather surprisingly thin plan of action.

This is especially upsetting having just returned from the US southern border in Texas, where we visited migrants in Reynosa, Mexico who are living in abysmal conditions in the city’s downtown plaza after being denied entry into the United States under the current Title 42 health restrictions.

The Root Causes Strategy works in parallel with the Collaborative Migration Management Strategy, which recognizes “long-standing drivers of migration” such as violence, corruption and underdevelopment, along with new drivers like the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change impacts on food security and increasing disasters felt in last year’s hurricanes Eta and Iota.

The Strategy adopts a four-pronged comprehensive approach that includes “addressing the root causes of irregular migration, collaboratively managing migration in the region, expanding lawful pathways for protection and opportunity in the United States, and restoring and enhancing asylum processing at the US Southwest border.”

The Migration Strategy identifies actions to strengthen cooperative efforts to manage migration, while the Root Causes Strategy addresses the underlying factors leading to migration.

With reports that the Root Causes Strategy has already run into resistance with Mexico, one has to wonder whether the ‘light on details’ plan is a scaled back version of ambitions alluded to previously.

Root Causes Light on Climate & Responsibility

While the Strategy does address multiple important issues, including climate change that are contributing drivers or push factors of migration and displacement, it’s incredibly light on US plans to address the effects of climate change in the region.

Perhaps that is because the plan contains a blind spot of only looking at external issues in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and overlooks important introspection of what the United States can do to lower its carbon emissions and meet important cooperative global climate finance commitments on climate adaptation and resilience in the region.

After all, historically, the United States is the largest polluting country, having contributed one ton of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. While Central America has contributed less than 1% of CO2 emissions in the region but suffers disproportionate impacts, which is an issue of loss and damage that still has no clear mechanism for redress in international policy.

On its specifics, it's concerning that much of the proposal harkens to previous economic development efforts that have had limited success to curb migration. As well, the plan likely overly relies once again on unnamed private corporations as solutions, which end up being fiscally more lucrative for the companies, while generally tending to have limited reach and scope to the most vulnerable regions and populations.

The Vice President concedes that US engagement in Central America hasn’t always been consistent but she fails to acknowledge that past programs haven’t always reached areas with the most acute needs either.

This is best exemplified by the fact that the strategy altogether overlooks any measures to work directly with and incorporate knowledge of Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean communities, leaders, environmental leaders and farmers as partners, rather than passive recipients. This is a failed opportunity to identify concerns and problems in rural Dry Corridor regions well-known to be driving migration both internally and externally to the US southern border.

Equally, it is a missed opportunity to ensure the full collaboration of these Indigenous communities towards building sustainable solutions. Furthermore, measures to ensure full and meaningful participation of these communities, notably women, as partners and co-leaders, and most essentially, to confirm that US foreign assistance reaches the most impacted frontline communities in the rural Dry Corridor, are all failures to address true root causes deeply impacting vulnerability across the region.

Finally, the strategy is geared towards the Northern Triangle Countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which traditionally has excluded Nicaragua, but given the existing and increasing migration from Nicaragua and the utter devastation following hurricanes Eta and Iota, excluding Nicaragua from the plan seems like a shortsighted and missed opportunity.

This decision is rather curious, leaving us to wonder whether the administration has Nicaraguan needs captured elsewhere?

The Strategy mentions multilateral partnerships with several other States like Mexico, Japan and South Korea, as well as foundations, which will be intriguing to actually hear details about. The geopolitical interests of Japan and South Korea in this region will be very interesting to see play out as well.

A Migration Strategy Intended to Limit US Hosting

The companion Migration Strategy is far more detailed and at first glance, appears to address all the important factors like strengthening migration pathways, creating regional resettlement opportunities, strengthening asylum and protection mechanisms and so on. However, in the long run, it is clear that these are efforts to bolster regional mechanisms to help Central Americans stay in their countries or within the region, and for those who must flee, new asylum and resettlement pathways are envisioned across a multitude of countries in the region and elsewhere, and far less in the United States.

Of most concern, however, are the protection needs of asylum seekers stranded at US southern borders as a result of the administration’s continued use of Title 42. And although the new Strategy includes plans to “integrate refugees in the region”, as in Mexico, local media in Texas indicates that Mexico has stopped accepting non-Mexican families expelled by the US.

While still unofficial, the news shared by a Mexican federal source was seemingly not denied on Sunday by the US Department of Homeland Security.

Climate Refugees is developing further analysis on the administration’s Migration Strategy, which we will provide in the days to come. Stay tuned to PERSPECTIVES for more on this developing story.