As a frequent concern both of governments and of the public at large in Western Hemisphere nations, international migration is now more prominent than at any time since 1980. The episodic flow of seaborne refugees from Haiti since 1991 has been a key factor in spurring the inter-American community to oppose Haiti's military rulers. The flotilla of rafts leaving Cuba since early August 1994 has engendered high-profile negotiations on migration between Washington and Havana. The stream of undocumented labor migrants from Mexico to the United States has regained momentum since the late 1980s and is encountering increased public criticism, especially in the western United States.

Underlying these instances of political tension is a strong, and only partially-met, demand for migration to the United States from parts of Latin America and the Caribbean on the one hand, and a growing anxiety in the US to “control the nation's borders” on the other.

The circumstances of the diverse nations of the Western Hemisphere have been dramatically transformed over the course of the past few years - as has the relationship among them. During the 1980s and early 1990s, a wave of democracy swept over most of Latin America and the Caribbean, placing almost all of the societies in the region under the rule of elected civilian governments. At the same time, the nationalist-statist development models of the past have been virtually abandoned and much more open, market-oriented lines of economic policy have been adopted. Moreover, many previously contentious issues that troubled relationships among the countries of the region and separated them from the United States appear to be in abeyance.

It should come as no surprise that the environmentalist community in the Americas, whose expectations were raised by the bold, global “Agenda 21” of the 1992 Earth Summit, the informal title accorded the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), would be concerned that the forces of free market capitalism and the urgency for economic development have proven to be more powerful than the regional movement towards sustainable development. By virtue of the region's large share of the planet's environmental resources, the global environmental agenda, which includes, inter alia, such complex and daunting problems as biodiversity, global warming, and ozone depletion, should logically place the Western Hemisphere in the center of policy action. On the eve of the December 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, however, the general principles outlined in the “Agenda 21” and related initiatives, have not been translated into concrete or coherent intergovernmental policy actions.

Trade policy throughout the Western Hemisphere is in a state of flux, more so now than at any other time in the postwar period. Among policy officials in Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America, there is general agreement on many trade policy issues but uncertainty about others. Although this paper starts with areas of agreement, it focuses upon those issues for which there is no consensus.