December 16, 2024 As the Biden administration comes to an end next month, so does one of the most ambitious migration management policy agendas in recent memory. Yet elements of the U.S. safe mobility strategy could be useful for European governments that are struggling to find an effective answer to similar mixed movements of asylum seekers and irregular migrants, our new short read explains. The U.S. strategy—mixing increased regional cooperation on immigration enforcement and a more orderly system for border arrivals with a significant expansion of lawful pathways and efforts to push humanitarian protection decisions away from the border—eventually saw irregular migration to the U.S.-Mexico border drop to its lowest levels in almost five years after a period of record arrivals. And in that, write Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysts Susan Fratzke, Meghan Benton, and Andrew Selee, there is a lesson: Sequencing matters. “Many of the elements promoting protection pathways preceded the efforts for greater regional enforcement and heightened U.S. requirements to seek asylum at borders. It was not until June 2024 that many enforcement measures, including greater cooperation with the Mexican and Panamanian governments and narrowing of asylum eligibility at borders, were fully implemented, with irregular arrivals then dropping precipitously,” they note. The short read delves into other ways in which the U.S. experiment can be instructive and details key elements of the strategy, including the expansion of pathways through initiatives such as the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) process; elements to bring more order to the border, such as through use of the CBP One app; and creation of Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) to give migrants information much earlier in the journey about lawful pathways in the United States, Canada, and Spain. “As the European Union and European states search for their own innovative solutions to mixed migration, they would do well to learn from the level of ambition and holistic nature of the experiment in the Americas,” the analysts conclude. “These include solid grounding in regional partnerships, innovative approaches to technology and infrastructure, and working with (rather than against) the agency of migrants.” Access the short read here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/lessons-us-safe-mobility-strategy-europe. | 
