USAID/LAC is evolving its approach to migration because migration patterns in the hemisphere are changing. These changes go far beyond the high numbers of U.S. border encounters in the headlines.
- Today’s migration is from a much broader and evolving set of countries. According to data from Custom and Border Protection (CBP), so far in FY 2022, 42 percent of people encountered at the Southwest U.S. border are neither from Mexico nor from Northern Central America (NCA). From FY 2015–2019 this was only 4–9 percent. The vast majority of these ‘new’ encounters are from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Colombia, Brazil, Haiti and others.
- Today’s migration is more likely to be “secondary migration” than in previous years—people who had already been displaced outside their country of birth, and for various reasons departed once again migrating onward. According to the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM’s) Displacement Tracking Matrix, forty six percent of Venezuelans surveyed crossing the Darién Gap in June and July of this year had departed from a place of residence outside Venezuela.
- Today’s migration has at times been managed with ad hoc policy innovation. The three largest mobility crises in the last decade—Venezuelans in Colombia, Syrians in Turkey, Ukrainians in Europe—are mostly being addressed through regularization schemes distinct from the granting of formal refugee status.
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