If you are a smuggler in Guatemala, you can continue to move north because US President Joe Biden has turned on the green light.
Similar invitations are being spread across immigration unions in Mexico, where the new US administration is giving hope to thousands of stranded asylum seekers that their demands will now be taken seriously. But not that quickly.
No open border policy
Despite a series of executive decrees and proposals to reverse immigration policies of former President Donald Trump, the Biden administration still requires patience.
Far from the open border policy, the Biden administration understands that to slow down Central American immigration, it must work with countries to address the root causes of the problem.
Complications with the so-called Northern Triangle states of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and a difficult relationship with Mexico - the southern neighbor of the United States - will make it more difficult - according to Brink.
President Joe Biden has quickly begun a four-year thu nghich over immigration.
On his first day in office, he opened the door to naturalization for 11 million unlicensed immigrants, suspended the construction of a border wall and protected the DACA program (Action Program for Deporting Illegal Impatriots to the US since childhood).
The next day, Mr. Biden announced plans to suspend deportations for 100 days and suspend former President Trump's "Stay in Mexico" program, which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico to be tried in US court. Immediately after that, Mr. Biden abandoned former President Trump's policy of separated families and pledged to increase the limit of refugees to 125,000 people.
But not all policies can be implemented with just one touch of the pen.
It will take time to remove the Trump administration's changes to the US immigration system - including about 1,058 individual policy changes that have been identified.
In addition, there is the issue of rebuilding infrastructure and capacity, including the ability and resources to process applications for asylum. And for long-term change, President Joe Biden will need Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform; address issues like permanent resident or nationality.
Solving poverty and violence in the Northern Triangle
Former President Donald Trump has cut US development aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in an effort to force their governments to cut immigration to the US. That leaves these Northern Triangle countries unable to cover the initial root causes of peoples departure.
President Biden will have a very different approach, a $4 billion approach, in the hope that addressing issues such as poverty, violence, environmental crises and unemployment in Central America will encourage people to stay in their homeland.
The new administration has also ended Trump-era policies that forced migrants to seek asylum in the Northern Triangle first.
However, cooperation to improve daily life will be more difficult if countries are not in harmony with each other. The Biden administration has recently rejected El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's request to meet.
Meanwhile, US prosecutors are investigating the President of Honduras over drug-related bribes. In Guatemala, Mr. Biden, during his vice presidential term, urged the governments of several countries to accept the UN-backed International Commission for Sanctions on Guatemala, but the former president of Guatemala closed the committee in 2019.
Can the United States avoid a trampoline?
The Biden administration told migrants: This is not the time to come, but the message was being ignored.
Despite his prayers for patience, President Biden's victory in the November election last year fueled the storm to the United States. In the past four months, US authorities have carried out more than 70,000 detentions and arrests along the Mexico border, one of the busiest periods of the past decade.
President Biden is facing a perfect storm for a large migration to the north. Latin America has the second highest number of COVID-19 deaths after Europe.
Last year, the region's GDP fell 7.4%, threatening to erase progress in decades of poverty reduction. Two typhoons swept across Central America in 2020, destroying homes and causing billions of dollars in damage.
The prospect of a migration wave was clear just days before Mr. Biden's inauguration, when a migration group of about 9,000 people traveled from Honduras through Guatemala to the US, before being stopped in Guatemala.
A recent poll shows that a whopping 41% of Honduras aged 18-39 consider their migration very likely.
Difficult partnerships with Mexico
An important part of the immigration problem for any effective US immigration policy is cooperation with Mexico. Mexico's President Andres Manuel lopez Obrador has become an uncertain ally of former President Donald Trump, deploying thousands of soldiers to suppress US seekers of asylum from Central America.
However, President Lpez Obrador, Mexico's popular leader, did not recognize President Biden's victory until mid-December and focused on fossil fuels as the Biden administration pushed for renewable energy to fight the climate crisis.
Recently, the Mexican government has stopped receiving Chinese-American families who are rapidly returning from the US border under a Trump-era health emergency for COVID-19. In return, hundreds of recently arrived families have been returned to the US by Border Guard staff.
Changes are real in the long term
Amid easing of tariffs on Latin America and more open immigration policies in the US, northward migration will continue to accelerate.
But if President Biden's immigration policies are successful - including improved economic opportunities, rule of law and transparency in Central America - a long-term shift in northern migration models is a real possibility. Meanwhile, the policy will also face political problems, as the US and Latin American governments call on their facilities and President Biden tries to keep the Democrats in power in midterm elections and beyond.
