Almost two years after President Joe Biden stepped into office, nearly a dozen ambassadors to key countries in the Western Hemisphere are still not in place, with eight nominees having their confirmation hearings put on hold by a Republican senator — all during a pivotal time in the region.
Ambassadorial nominees to Nicaragua, Brazil, Panama, Uruguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, El Salvador and the Organization of American States have been nominated but their confirmations are being held up by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.
Biden recently nominated an ambassador to Ecuador and has yet to nominate ambassadors to the Dominican Republic, as well as Colombia — the strongest ally of the United States in the region which recently elected its first leftist president. Chile’s ambassador was recently confirmed after the position was vacant for close to four years.
“This is the worst it’s ever been,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a former State Department official and diplomat. “It’s been a trend for a long time. In other words, it gets worse with every administration.”
Finding candidates has become more difficult over the years because both the vetting and the confirmation processes have become more complex, and could become tedious and frustrating for the nominees. With Biden’s nominations to the region, partisan politics in Congress and what some have described as the administration foot-dragging have also complicated the confirmation process, even while they were still in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The latest holdup came in mid-May when Scott placed the “blanket hold” on all the nominees for Latin America and the Caribbean after Biden lifted some restrictions placed on Cuba by former President Donald Trump. The lifted restrictions included some on travel, as well as the amount of remittances that can be sent from the U.S. Scott called the move “an idiotic attempt to return to Obama’s failed appeasement policies.”
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, “It is unfortunate that Republican obstruction continues to delay these much needed appointments to a number of critical roles, many of whom would help our government respond to recent political transitions in Latin America.”
Scott’s office told NBC News in an emailed statement that “Biden’s appeasement of the illegitimate communist Cuban regime is disgusting. I will hold relevant nominees until it’s reversed.”
But even before Scott’s hold in May, some of the nominees had been waiting for over a year to be confirmed. The Senate has confirmed 143 Senate Foreign Relations Committee nominees, but very few of those confirmed have been from the Western Hemisphere.
“It’s an embarrassment,” said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “It reinforces the perception that the U.S. doesn’t care about Latin America.”
Delays ‘on a different level now’
Out of 49 State Department nominees pending in the Senate, less than 20 of them are on the floor. Almost half of those on the Senate floor are from the Western Hemisphere.
A White House spokesperson said they continue to press the Senate to process as many nominees as possible given other competing demands for floor time.
Shifter said the confirmation of ambassadors to Europe and Asia has always been a higher priority for the U.S. than Latin America.
“I do think it’s on a different level now,” he said.
Compared to other regions in the world, the confirmation of ambassadors in the Western Hemisphere can become more politicized. There are no blanket holds on nominees in other regions, such as Europe or Asia, like there is in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Farnsworth said part of the problem causing vacant ambassadorships is that “the political atmosphere in Washington gets more poisoned every cycle….
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