Is it Nicaragua that is “weaponizing” immigration or is it Washington?
Claims that Nicaragua is “weaponizing” immigration by allowing free passage of migrants towards the U.S. border have been appearing regularly in the media over the last twelve months. The claim was made on NPR in January, in the Associated Press last October, in El Pais last November and by the BBC this July, to cite just a few. In May, the Biden administration accused the Nicaraguan government (the “Ortega-Murillo regime”) of “repressing people and preying on migrants,” imposing new sanctions on those it believed responsible. Is there any basis to these claims?
Behind all such stories is Manuel Orozco of The Inter-American Dialogue, who has been accusing his former country of “weaponizing” immigration since at least early 2023. Orozco’s most recent appearance is in an article by Robert Looney for World Politics Review (WPR),which quotes him extensively. Orozco’s main argument is summarized in this sentence by Looney: “Unlike other Central American countries that have implemented more stringent visa regulations to control migration to the U.S., Managua permits citizens from around 90 countries to enter visa-free, allowing them to bypass the dangerous Darien Gap route through Panama on their way north.”
Let’s take a look at what this really means.
First, it’s true that Nicaragua does allow migrants from different countries to arrive without visas, some of them on charter flights, also allowing them to head north towards the U.S. However, it is not the only country to do so: Brazil does too, and El Salvador gives passage to many foreign nationals, albeit with high visa fees. Furthermore, while Mexico and Guatemala have taken steps to deter migrants, other Central American countries allow them to pass through freely – such as Honduras, Costa Rica and (until recently) Panama. In the latter case, migrants arriving from Colombia through the notoriously dangerous Darién Gap have been obliged to take buses north to Panama’s border with Costa Rica, facilitating their rapid passage through the country.
Second, for many migrants transiting Nicaragua the only realistic alternative to arriving in Managua by air is to start their journey in South America and cross the Darién Gap, where at least 141 migrants died in 2023 alone. Indeed, a recent report by Human Rights Watch decries the neglect by countries in the region of the extreme dangers facing migrants in Darién, and calls for safe alternatives. Enabling people who are determined to reach the U.S. border to avoid facing these dangers by landing in Managua is surely one of them.
Third, WPR claims that the landing fees and visa charges linked to migrant charter flights primarily benefit the “Ortegas and their associates” rather than stimulating broader economic development. This is a completely evidence-free statement, since the fees collected at Nicaraguan border controls enter the government’s general revenue accounts, as they would in most countries. Nicaraguan government spending strongly prioritizes poverty reduction and investment in public services (unlike the US federal budget, two-thirds of which goes on defense spending).
In reality, Nicaragua is picked out by Washington, and sanctioned, because “weaponizing” immigration is a convenient addition to U.S. criticisms of the Sandinista government. When other countries facilitate the passage of migrants by land, the Biden administration turns a blind eye.
What is remarkable is that WPR and similar articles in mainstream media simply accept the premise that it is entirely reasonable for Washington to expect Nicaragua’s help in deterring migrants. This ignores the fact that the Ortega government’s lack of cooperation might be an understandable response to the Biden administration’s unremitting public attacks and, more especially, economic sanctions, which have led to cuts in its development programs of at least $2,500-3,000 million over the past five years.
Washington’s brazen arrogance in expecting Nicaragua’s assistance while doing its best to undermine its government is perhaps not surprising, but might at least be questioned by the media. The administration’s actions might reasonably be noted as an obstacle to cooperation and a possible explanation for Nicaragua’s indifference. Instead, Nicaragua is even accused (by the Christian Science Monitor) of using migration as a “bargaining tool” to get concessions from Washington (which, if it were true, would have been a remarkably unsuccessful tactic on the part of the Ortega government).
There is another, related charge made against Nicaragua by the WPR and in other articles: that its government is actively “encouraging the emigration of Nicaraguans” themselves, because of high unemployment levels in their homeland and because they will send money (“remittances”) to their Nicaraguan families. Supposedly, remittances are “a crucial source of revenue preventing the collapse of the Nicaraguan economy.”
There is little or no evidence to support this argument either. While Nicaragua does not prevent its citizens from migrating, it certainly does not encourage them. Indeed, given that the whole emphasis of government spending is on poverty reduction and the provision of better health, education and housing for its inhabitants, achievements that are promoted enthusiastically at almost every opportunity, it would be decidedly two-faced if the government were also to encourage Nicaraguans to leave the country.
In another absurd claim, WPR credits Washington with trying to alleviate the “push factors” which might tempt Nicaraguans to migrate, giving as an example its sanctioning of two of Nicaragua’s gold-mining companies and its imposition of visa restrictions on 250 individual Nicaraguans. Quite how these aggressive measures are expected to disincentivize migration is not made clear. In fact, the prospect of ever tighter U.S. sanctions is a much more likely “push factor”.
If the question arises as to who, then, is encouraging Nicaraguans to leave, at least part of the answer can be found not in Managua but in various “pull factors” created by Washington itself. The U.S. government long gave Nicaraguans arriving at its southern border preferential (so-called “Title 8”) treatment compared with similar arrivals from the rest of Central America, a fact well known to potential migrants. However, for the past two years it has been promoting its more attractive “humanitarian parole” program, via regular publicity from the U.S. embassy which is faithfully repeated by opposition media (the same media which two-facedly blame the Sandinista government for encouraging migration).
Surprisingly, and contrary to claims regularly made by Manuel Orozco, Nicaraguan migration north is rather low, despite Washington’s tempting offers. For example, in fiscal year 2023 just 38,113 Nicaraguans were granted “parole”, accounting for only four per cent of all parole cases approved that year (and, of course, not all those granted parole will actually migrate). While it’s also true that Nicaraguans featured strongly for a short period (2021-23) in southern border “encounters” by U.S. agencies, those numbers have returned almost to their previous miniscule levels (2,666 in August 2024, less than two per cent of all encounters). And all this is despite Nicaragua having one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the hemisphere.
A parallel argument from Orozco, which Looney calls Central America’s “forgotten” migrant crisis, is that massive numbers of Nicaraguans have also been forced to go south to Costa Rica. It is true that some 308,000 Nicaraguans have sought asylum since 2018, the vast majority in Costa Rica, but it is also true that its government has been remarkably reluctant to grant their claims, partly because it believes they mostly come from Nicaraguans trying to regularize their status in a country to which they have travelled looking for work. Costa Rica has a fluid population of more than half a million Nicaraguans, on which its economy depends, and its own statistics show that they travel freely back and forth to their home country (over 300,000 did so in the last 12 months, slightly more than travelled in the opposite direction).
Of course, all this could change if Nicaragua were to be at the receiving end of much tougher sanctions, as has happened with countries such as Cuba and Venezuela. When there was a short-lived attempt to encourage a consumer embargo of Nicaraguan meat exports to the U.S. (so-called “conflict beef”), producers said it put the livelihoods of 600,000 Nicaraguan workers at risk. This is perhaps why Washington now only slings insults at Daniel Ortega rather than instigating another coup attempt as it did in 2018. It views the Sandinista government as a severe irritant because it refuses to kowtow to U.S. demands, but it might find a surge of uncontrolled Nicaraguan migration to be far more problematic.
A quick Google search will show that Manuel Orozco’s claims appear very widely in mainstream media. Not surprisingly, his employer, The Inter-American Dialogue, is a think tank funded by the US government, Ford Foundation and others aligned with U.S. foreign policy. He claims, on the kind of flimsy evidence discussed here, that nearly a quarter of Nicaraguans live abroad, blaming this (of course) on government repression. Yet published statistics show Nicaragua’s population growing almost every year since 1960. As a long-time opponent of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, Orozco could fairly be accused of “weaponizing” immigration himself.
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