Latin American Leaders Call for 'Right to Migrate' in Mexico Summit Convened by AMLO

Leaders of 12 Latin American countries finished a migration-focused summit in Mexico with a joint call to respect the "human right to migrate" and a request for more legal means to do so at their destination countries.

"(We agree to) call the origin, transit and destination countries implement integral migration policies that respect the human right to migrate, protecting the life and dignity of migrants and their families, as well as the addition and promotion of permanent regularization options," reads a passage of the document.

The summit was hosted by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), whose administration has been trying to 'export' some social programs intended to mitigate poverty and create jobs in rural areas.

The statement was signed by the representatives of all countries who attended the summit at the Mexican town of Palenque: Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, Belice, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama and Venezuela, as well as Mexico.

Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena, who read the document, added that attendants argued that "external factors, such as unilateral coercive measures of indiscriminate nature negatively affect entire populations and mostly the more vulnerable communities."

They also claimed that "selective" measures boost irregular migration, a sentence that could reference U.S. policies that gran asylum for citizens of certain countries (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela) but immediately deport others.

"(We agreed to) call for destination countries to adopt policies and migration practices that are in accordance with the reality of our region and abandon those that are inconsistent and selective to avoid producing arbitrary calling and dissuasive effects," reads the statement.

The summit took place at a time of heightened migratory flows across Latin America and to the United States. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO), quoted stats from the International Organization for Migration that show up to 16,000 people reaching the Mexican borders every day. He promised to take a unified regional position to his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden in November.

This year alone, 1.7 million migrants arrived at the Mexican-US border. And the migration is becoming a huge political hot potato in both North American nations, which each have presidential elections next year.

September alone saw 60,000 migrants arrive in Mexico from Venezuela, along with 35,000 Guatemalans and 27,000 Hondurans, according to the Mexican government.

Amid US economic sanctions and a political and economic crisis, some 7.1 million Venezuelans have fled the country in recent years, creating challenges for its South American neighbors. Some 130 Venezuelan migrants arrived back home Wednesday on a chartered plane from the United States on the first such deportation flight following an agreement between the two countries, despite the fact that Washington does not recognize Maduro's 2018 reelection.

The United States sends migrants back home, mainly to Central and South America, on about 70 flights every week, authorities said recently.

At the same time, the Biden administration also recently offered protection from deportation to 472,000 Venezuelans to allow them to obtain residence and work permits within 18 months -- although this would apply only to those who arrived before July 31 of this year.