Migration as Leverage: What is Instrumentalized Migration?
Recently, the President of Mexico attempted to hold the U.S. hostage in exchange for cooperation on stemming migrant flows from Mexico towards our southern border. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, demanded $20 billion, 10 million visas for his citizens, and the lifting of sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba. Left unsaid was the obvious threat that if these concessions were not forthcoming then cooperation would cease and the U.S. would face more uncontrolled immigration. This is an obvious attempt to use mass migration as leverage. Given that 83 percent of illegal aliens encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) since 2021 were encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Mexican President clearly felt he was in a position of leverage. Mexico, because of its geographic proximity is unsurprisingly keen to use this tool. But it is possible the idea is catching on with other countries.
While immigration-related tensions between neighboring countries are nothing new, international relations scholars are increasingly seeing this use of migration cooperation, or willful lack thereof, as a tool of “influence” between countries. It is referred to as “instrumentalized migration” and in an increasingly uncertain world where states attempt to leverage or even threaten one another while avoiding direct aggression, it is likely to become more relevant. The U.S. is already on the receiving end of it and is sure to see more if we do not address the weakness of our immigration policy and border security.
The demands by the Mexican President are part of a growing pattern globally of countries using the issue of migration cooperation to extract concessions. One of the more recent examples of this was in October 2023, then Tunisia fell out with the EU over migration cooperation, with demands linked to money being central to the fallout. A similar attempt was employed by the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, against the European Union (EU) in 2020. Turkey hosts 3.6 million refugees, most of them from Syria and other troubled spots in the Middle and Near East. Many of these refugees are hoping to illegally migrate to Europe, and at the height of the European refugee crisis in 2015, over 800,000 migrants used Turkey to enter Europe. The EU signed a cooperation agreement with Turkey to stop the migrants coming in. Ever since, Turkey has periodically threatened to not stop the migrants if concessions it demands are not met. These demands include more money for Turkey and visa liberalization for Turks visiting the EU.
States often use migration as bargaining tools by threatening not to stop migration across their territory en route to the country they wish to extract concessions from. However, there is an even more overtly hostile form of instrumentalized immigration. This involves actively driving migrants into the territory of a target country that the driving state has a grievance against. The best examples of this come from the ongoing Ukraine War. Finland closed its land borders with Russia after it accused the latter of sending migrants in Finland to destabilize it. Russian ally Belarus relaxed entry requirements to Belarus from the Middle East, incentivizing Middle Easterners to travel there, and then directed them to the border of Poland.
Instrumentalized migration is something the U.S. must be increasingly aware of. It is not only Mexico that seems to be exploring this tool as a means of policy towards the U.S. Nicaragua has a very relaxed visa regime for some of the world’s poorest countries. This incentivizes migrants to arrive there and then use Nicaragua as a stepping stone to the U.S., where the migrants can file bogus asylum claims. Nicaragua’s government is hostile to the U.S., so it is possible (even likely) that this is an example of instrumentalized migration being used to harm a rival. Given Nicaragua’s hostility to the U.S. and its closeness to U.S. enemies like Iran this idea of instrumentalized migration deserves more attention from policy makers.