WASHINGTON, DC and PANAMA CITY, PANAMA — Governments across the Americas are managing increasing mobility pressures by expanding regular pathways for migration through regional mobility agreements, circular labor migration programs, humanitarian protection measures and other innovative policies. A new report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) maps the evolving landscape, as countries from Chile to Canada seek to incentivize safe, orderly and regular migration while simultaneously tightening restrictions on irregular migration.

Despite the expansion of pathways, managing migration pressures effectively remains a challenge across the Americas. High levels of irregular movement continue to test both destination and transit countries. Furthermore, these pathways often grant temporary statuses, leading to integration challenges for both migrants and host communities. The report underscores the need for concerted efforts to create regular pathways that offer real alternatives to irregular migration.

“Understanding the landscape of regular migration pathways that exist in the Americas, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, is critical as we undertake national and international policy discussions to reshape migration in the region toward a safe, regular and orderly system that works for all and takes full advantage of all the opportunities that migration presents for both origin and host communities,” said Serena Hoy, IOM’s Special Envoy for Regular Pathways.

These issues will be prominently discussed at a hemispheric meeting on labor migration pathways happening today in Mexico.

The report, Building on Regular Pathways to Address Migration Pressures in the Americas, highlights commonalities, differences and notable limitations of these pathways. It also explores how these pathways could be enhanced or expanded to provide viable alternatives to irregular movements, in alignment with governments’ aspirations for safe, orderly and regular migration.

The report’s authors, MPI analysts María Jesús Mora, Ariel G. Ruiz Soto and Andrew Selee, propose several recommendations to better navigate mobility challenges in the Americas amid significant displacement and other migration pressures. These include strengthening mobility agreements across countries and nationalities, leveraging private-sector interests in labor migration, expanding access to permanent status in part to maximize migrants’ contributions to host communities, enhancing regional coordination and prioritizing migration data and analysis.

"Facing the new migration realities in the Western Hemisphere requires governments to redouble their efforts to design regular pathways that can effectively adapt not only to current but also future migration trends and, importantly, benefit all segments of society—from businesses to migrants to the communities in which they settle,” said Selee, who is MPI’s president. “In this, the hemisphere’s rich mix of pathways can offer a solid foundation on which governments and their partners globally can build.”

Read the report here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/regular-pathways-americas.

And read it in Spanish here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/vias-regulares-hemisferio-occidental.

For more from MPI’s Latin America and Caribbean Initiative, visit: www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/latin-america-caribbean-initiative.

For more from IOM, visit: https://respuestavenezolanos.iom.int/en.

For more information please contact: 
From IOM: Gema Cortes at Marcortes@iom.int 
From MPI: Michelle Mittelstadt at mmittelstadt@migrationpolicy.org