President Joe Biden is preparing to finalize a first-of-its-kind deal with Spain to resettle refugees from the Western Hemisphere that continue to flood into the U.S., a Wednesday evening report revealed.
The pledge from Spain is coupled with Canada significantly expanding its refugee commitment in the region, according to an internal planning document reviewed by Axios – and could help the U.S. deal with the prevailing migrant crisis at the southern border.
Both deals appear to be linked and contingent on bringing in migrants for work in both Spain and Canada.
The commitments are expected to be announced at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California next week, which is being held in the U.S. for the first time since 1994.
Deals with Spain and Canada could provide Biden and, in turn, the Democratic Party a political boost ahead of the 2022 midterms where the border crisis and national security have taken a front seat.
While the deal with the two nations is promising, one Canadian government official told Axios: ‘Conversations are still ongoing and no decisions have been taken regarding specific commitments on migration at next week’s summit.’
The number of refugees that would be resettled in Spain would be ‘modest’, the document details, adding it would be ‘symbolically important.’
The deal is meant to help the U.S. as it faces hundreds of thousands of migrants illegally entering over the southern border from Mexico and is aimed to assist with labor shortages in Spain and place migrants in jobs in Canada. Pictured: Immigrants pray after coming over the border into Yuma, Arizona on May 23, 2022
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials made 234,088 stops on the Mexican border in April, a new high for the Biden administration and an overall 22-year high and a 5.8% increase from the 221,303 encounters in March
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said that the deal ‘only symbolizes real action to end the border crisis’ and is not enough to address the real reasons for the migration surge.
‘It would do absolutely nothing to address the root cause of the crisis – their intentional weaponization of asylum loopholes and their continued refusal to follow plain law,’ FAIR’s Government Relations Manager Preston Huennekens told DailyMail.com.
‘If the Biden administration thinks they can keep beating around the bush by offering Potemkin Village solutions to a problem that they refuse to address head-on, they’re sorely mistaken,’ he added.
‘The American people have had enough of their border being overrun and cannot be easily fooled.’
Spain, which is experiencing a massive labor shortage coming off of the coronavirus pandemic, is expected to agree to double or triple the amount of temporary workers from Central America they accept into the employment-based migration program.
Canada is planning to announce new ‘recruitment and promotion’ efforts to bring Haitians to the North American country for work. A recent report shows that the Department of Homeland Security intelligence is tracking 10,000 Haitians waiting just south of the U.S. border in preparation to cross.
It comes after a group of 10,000 Haitian migrants created a makeshift encampment under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas in September, which was ultimately cleared but brought more attention to the crisis asylum-seekers are facing.
Canada is also expected to announce a new target of accepting 5,000 refugees over the course of multiple years from the Western Hemisphere, which is a minuscule amount compared to the hundreds of thousands who have attempted to cross into the U.S. over the last year.
Despite the modest goal, this would still be a massive increase for Canada, which accepted less than 1,500 migrants from the western hemisphere between January 2015 and March 2022.
Canada is planning to announce new ‘recruitment and promotion’ efforts to bring Haitians there for work as more than 12,000 from the island wait to enter the U.S. south of the border
April saw a 20-year high in illegal immigration to the U.S. with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountering 234,088 migrants attempting to cross the southern border from Mexico. It was an increase from the record-setting high the month prior where 222,144 encounters are on record for March.
These figures are only expected to increase into the summer months, where temperatures get so high that the dangerous trip becomes even more deadly for those attempting to seek asylum in the U.S.
The Summit of Americas, which Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will attend next week, has been riddled with threats of boycotts following reports the administration would not allow the authoritarian leaders from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to participate.
Migration issues are sure to be a focus of the ninth ever Summit of the Americas, which occurs every three to four years since the first under then-President Bill Clinton in Miami, Florida in 1994.
Similar to the U.S. plan to offshore migrants to Spain and Canada, the United Kingdom is also sending immigrants that arrive there to Rwanda.
But UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab admitted last month that the number deported to Rwanda is likely to only be in the ‘hundreds’ each year compared to the tens of thousands Prime Minister Boris Johnson said could be sent.
Raab said he wants to ‘manage expectations’ regarding the plan to give illegal immigrants to the UK a one-way ticket to Rwanda.
‘I would have thought it was more likely to be in the hundreds,’ Raab told BBC’s Radio 4’s Today program.
The five-year deal announced by Johnson last month will cost British taxpayers £120 million, which comes to about $150.5 million.
