By Samuel Sales Saraiva
Proposal for a Union of Sovereign Nations of the Americas
Suggestion for the creation of a Brazil–United States Bilateral Commission for preliminary studies on continental integration
To the Governments of the Federative Republic of Brazil and the United States of America.
For nearly two decades, I have publicly advocated the need to deepen the relationship between Brazil and the United States as an instrument of development, cooperation, and mutual strengthening.
That reflection has matured.
What I once envisioned primarily as a deeper association between two nations, I now understand as a much broader possibility: Brazil and the United States could jointly initiate the study of a future integration among sovereign nations of the Americas.
What is being proposed is not the dissolution of States, the elimination of national identities, or the subordination of one nation to another.
Quite the opposite is proposed: a voluntary union of associated sovereign nations, progressively built upon common interests, reciprocity, cooperation, and mutual respect.
The experience of the European Union demonstrates that countries with different histories, cultures, languages, economies, and interests can build permanent mechanisms of integration without ceasing to exist as sovereign nations.
The Americas have their own particular characteristics. Therefore, the objective would not be simply to reproduce the European model, but to study its experiences, achievements, difficulties, and solutions, making use of this extraordinary institutional legacy to anticipate foreseeable obstacles and avoid wasting time, resources, and energy.
We would not need to start from zero.
We could learn from what other peoples have already experienced and, from that accumulated knowledge, develop an inter-American model of our own.
THE FIRST STEP
No transformation of this magnitude should begin with conclusions established in advance.
It should begin with study.
For this reason, I submit to the governments of Brazil and the United States the suggestion that they create a:
BRAZIL–UNITED STATES BILATERAL COMMISSION FOR STUDIES ON CONTINENTAL CONVERGENCE AND INTEGRATION
This commission could bring together government representatives, diplomats, jurists, economists, universities, scientists, specialists in security, technology, infrastructure, the environment, and representatives of civil society from both countries.
Its first mission would be to answer a simple question, but one of potentially historic significance:
How far could Brazil and the United States advance together in building a model of integration capable of subsequently welcoming other sovereign nations of the Americas?
There would be no advance commitment to political union, a common currency, unrestricted freedom of movement, or the transfer of national powers.
Everything should be subject to study.
Among other matters, the commission could examine:
• economic and trade integration;
• progressive reduction of barriers;
• facilitation of investment;
• science, technology, and artificial intelligence;
• university and educational cooperation;
• recognition of academic and professional qualifications;
• continental infrastructure;
• mobility of people;
• collective security and the fight against transnational organized crime;
• environmental protection and energy transition;
• agriculture, health, and digital integration;
• legal and institutional compatibility and mechanisms of governance.
BRAZIL AND THE UNITED STATES AS THE INITIAL CORE
Brazil and the United States could become the first two participants in this process, not as owners or permanent leaders of a future union, but as initiators of an open, voluntary, and progressive experience.
Other nations of the Americas that shared its principles and identified benefits in the initiative could participate in the studies from their earliest stages or join later, according to their own sovereign will and respective constitutional procedures.
Convergence could begin among those willing to move forward.
The process would not need to remain paralyzed while awaiting simultaneous consensus from every nation on the continent.
The concrete results of the experience would themselves become the best demonstration of its usefulness, its limitations, and its potential for expansion.
A UNION OF ASSOCIATED SOVEREIGN NATIONS
The possible horizon would be the gradual formation of a Union of Sovereign Nations of the Americas, inspired by the European experience of integration but designed according to the particular realities of our continent.
• Each nation would preserve its identity, its institutions, its Constitution, and its sovereignty.
• Integration would not mean absorption.
• Cooperation would not mean submission.
• And sovereignty would not need to mean isolation.
A sovereign nation also exercises its sovereignty when it freely chooses to cooperate.
The objective would be to identify areas in which the sharing of efforts, responsibilities, and institutional mechanisms could produce results superior to those achieved in isolation.
Sovereignty would thus cease to be interpreted as an obligation to remain distant and would come to encompass the conscious freedom to converge.
FROM PUNITIVE RECIPROCITY TO CITIZEN-CENTERED RECIPROCITY
There is also a human reality that deserves consideration in this necessary rapprochement between Brazil and the United States.
Thousands of Brazilians live in the United States under irregular or precarious immigration status. They are workers, fathers, and mothers who participate in American economic life, build their lives in this country, and at the same time preserve deep ties with Brazil.
Many live for years under the shadow of immigration insecurity, without peace of mind regarding their own future and without the governments of the two countries having succeeded in building a comprehensive and lasting solution to this reality.
Paradoxically, this population contributes to both economies. They work, consume, and produce in the United States while simultaneously sending significant resources to relatives and communities in Brazil through international remittances.
Although consular assistance services exist and interventions have occurred in cases involving deportations and specific incidents, such measures should not be confused with diplomatic action aimed at regularizing the immigration status of Brazilians living in the United States. They are assistance or emergency responses to the consequences of the problem, not an initiative designed to address its cause.
There does not appear to be a sustained diplomatic effort aimed at seeking, together with U.S. authorities, pathways toward regularization, residency, or legal security for these thousands of compatriots.
The contrast deserves reflection when matters involving visas, sanctions, or the prerogatives of Brazilian authorities are capable of quickly mobilizing official statements, diplomatic initiatives, and high-level political engagement.
This is not about questioning the right of the Brazilian State to defend its authorities when it deems such action necessary. The issue is another, far more human one:
Why should the pursuit of legal security for thousands of ordinary Brazilian citizens—people who work, raise families, and live for years under permanent immigration uncertainty—not also deserve sustained diplomatic commitment?
It is precisely at this point that the principle of reciprocity could acquire a much higher meaning.
Instead of a merely restrictive or retaliatory reciprocity, in which a limitation imposed by one country automatically provokes another limitation by the other, Brazil and the United States could consider the opposite logic: reciprocity in the expansion of rights, guarantees, and legal security.
A future integration among sovereign nations of the Americas could gradually study, while respecting the particularities of each State, a reciprocal framework for mobility, residence, and rights, inspired by the experience of the European Union, although naturally adapted to the realities of the American continent.
It would not mean eliminating borders, sovereignty, or immigration responsibilities. It would mean recognizing that friendly nations can find more intelligent mechanisms for managing the mobility of their citizens.
Why reciprocally restrict when it is also possible to reciprocally protect?
A transformation of this nature could bring thousands of people out of insecurity and invisibility, giving them conditions to work, live, and contribute with greater peace of mind and full respect for the law.
It would replace an old logic — “if you restrict my citizen, I will restrict yours” — with another more compatible with mature societies:
“if you expand rights and security for my citizen, I will equally expand the rights and security of yours.”
Perhaps this is one of the most concrete examples of how diplomacy can move beyond merely managing disagreements and begin effectively building convergence.
The most intelligent reciprocity is not necessarily reciprocity through restriction. It can be reciprocity through dignity, freedom, and trust among peoples.
THE ABANDONMENT THAT MUST ALSO END
This concern for Brazilians living beyond our borders did not arise from the current political circumstances. It is a longstanding concern, motivated by the conditions of vulnerability faced by compatriots who, in the event of serious illness, accident, death, lack of resources, or another extreme situation, may discover that the protection provided by their country is insufficient precisely when they need it most.
It was this human reality that led me, years ago, to develop a proposal that was subsequently embraced and introduced in the Brazilian National Congress by Federal Deputy Manoel Júnior.
The proposal called for the creation of a 2% contribution on remittances sent to Brazil, establishing a dedicated and permanent source of resources intended to assist Brazilians abroad in truly emergency situations.
Among the purposes envisioned were emergency lodging, repatriation, medical care in extreme circumstances, legal assistance, and the transportation of bodies to Brazil when families lacked the financial means to do so.
The logic was simple: thousands of Brazilians live, work, or travel around the world, and many maintain permanent economic ties with the country. It would not be reasonable that, when tragedy reaches them far from home, their material protection should depend essentially on the improvised solidarity of friends, acquaintances, or the traditional fundraising collections organized by workers and communities themselves.
The proposal even established its own source of revenue. Therefore, the intention was not simply to create yet another state obligation without funding, but to transform occasional solidarity into a permanent, predictable, and responsible mechanism of protection.
The proposal did not advance. Perhaps, in addition to the technical objections raised during its consideration, there was a lack of deeper understanding of the human reality experienced by Brazilians abroad and of the meaning that a sense of abandonment can take on for someone who finds himself vulnerable thousands of miles from his country.
Such suffering can be unnecessary and degrading. And it produces a consequence that should not be overlooked: it weakens the sense of belonging and nationality.
When a citizen, far from his homeland, realizes that in the face of illness, death, lack of shelter, or lack of resources he depends essentially upon the spontaneous solidarity of other people, it is not merely his material security that becomes fragile.
The perception that a relationship of belonging, protection, and reciprocal responsibility exists between that citizen and his nation also becomes fragile.
The presence of the State abroad should not be perceived only through passports, registrations, consulates, or administrative formalities.
Nationality acquires its true meaning when citizens know that, even far from home, they will not be abandoned in a moment of extreme vulnerability.
Such protection does not mean replacing individual responsibility or transforming the State into an unlimited provider. It should exist for exceptional circumstances, under clear criteria, rigorous oversight, and resources previously allocated for that purpose.
A nation does not strengthen its bonds with its citizens merely by demanding duties from them. It strengthens those bonds by demonstrating that, when truly necessary, it will also stand beside them.
CONVERGE ON WHAT IS ESSENTIAL, CIRCUMSCRIBE DIVERGENCES
Among the philosophical lessons I retained from my studies of Diplomatic Law at the University of Brasília, one of the most important was conveyed to me by the late and distinguished Brazilian Ambassador José Oswaldo de Meira Penna:
True diplomatic intelligence must promote convergence and circumscribe divergences.
Decades later, this teaching seems to me more relevant than ever.
Diplomacy should not exist to magnify differences we already know, but to discover spaces for understanding that we have not yet explored.
This does not mean ignoring disagreements, abandoning principles, or artificially producing consensus.
It means recognizing that peoples and States can disagree profoundly on certain issues and still cooperate rationally in matters that serve their permanent interests.
To converge does not mean agreeing on everything. It means preventing the matters on which we disagree from making impossible what we could build together.
This principle becomes even more important in times when political antagonisms, partisan disputes, and ideological confrontations frequently consume energy, intelligence, and resources that could instead be devoted to solving concrete problems.
Temporary differences are sometimes elevated to the status of strategic obstacles.
The result is paradoxical: societies with extraordinary potential for cooperation may end up separated not by fundamental incompatibilities between their peoples, but by a temporary inability to distinguish what truly matters from what only momentarily divides them.
For this reason as well, the relationship between Brazil and the United States should be considered above the internal political disputes of either country.
The United States should not be transformed into an instrument of Brazil’s domestic political disputes, just as the relationship with Brazil should not be conditioned by temporary partisan preferences in Washington.
The relationship between two great nations must be greater than affinities or disagreements among passing governments.
Brazil and the United States share economic, scientific, environmental, technological, strategic, and human interests whose importance transcends administrations, parties, and ideologies.
It is precisely at this point that diplomacy finds one of its most important functions: removing relations between States from the narrowness of parochial disputes and placing them within the broader perspective of the permanent interests of their peoples.
It is necessary to understand that the permanent interests of States should not become temporary extensions of partisan or ideological disputes.
A more altruistic, prudent, and wise perspective requires that differences be placed in their proper dimension and that objectives capable of benefiting generations receive greater consideration than conveniences that may last for only a single election.
STATES ENDURE; GOVERNMENTS PASS
Governments are temporary.
Administrations change.
Political leaders succeed one another.
The structural challenges of States, however, remain.
Security, economic development, infrastructure, education, science, technology, the environment, competitiveness, and institutional stability do not disappear when a government changes. They continue to demand planning, intelligence, and long-term vision.
For this reason, an initiative for continental integration should not be conceived as the project of a particular president, administration, or party, but should be treated as a matter of State, above the passing circumstances of everyday politics.
Politics manages the present. A vision of State must also prepare the future.
A PROJECT OPEN TO THE AMERICAS
Brazil and the United States could constitute only the initial core.
Canada, Mexico, the countries of Central America, the Caribbean, and South America could progressively join according to their interests and sovereign will.
It would not be necessary for everyone to move forward at the same time or to the same degree of integration.
What would matter would be preserving a fundamental principle: voluntary participation, reciprocal benefits, and full respect for the sovereignty of the participating States.
A QUESTION FOR THE FUTURE
Simón Bolívar envisioned the integration of Latin American peoples at a time when transportation, communications, and international institutions were incomparably more limited.
Two centuries later, why not imagine a community composed of sovereign nations from across the American continent, capable of preserving their identities while simultaneously combining their extraordinary potential?
I do not propose that the Brazilian and American governments accept this conclusion today.
I propose something much simpler and more responsible:
that they decide to study it.
Creating a bilateral commission would not compromise the sovereignty of either party, would not automatically create any supranational organization, and would impose no future obligations.
It would simply create an institutional space in which a possibility of great significance could be examined with rationality, knowledge, prudence, and serenity.
There is only one responsible way to find out: study it.
What would begin as a study commission could, in the future, become something much greater: a voluntary union of associated sovereign nations, built not against anyone, but in favor of their own peoples and dedicated to peace, progress, and civilizational advancement.
Perhaps, decades from now, other generations may look back upon this initial gesture and recognize it as the moment when the Americas began replacing a culture of distance with a culture of convergence.
Not an America subjected to others.
Not an America made uniform.
Not an America imprisoned by ideological differences.
But an America of sovereign nations mature enough to understand that preserving their identities does not prevent them from building a better destiny together.
Intelligence dissipates conflicts, promotes harmony, and opens paths toward friendship and cooperation. By contrast, permanent confrontation produces destruction, suffering, and a regression as insane as it is unjustifiable.
Among peoples and nations that build relationships truly based on trust, mutual respect, and loyalty, the reasons for fear, distrust, and conflict diminish.
Everything else is too often lost amid temporary vanities and lesser disputes, the cost of which ultimately falls upon those who sustain the administrative machinery and legitimately expect from it competence, ethics, lucidity, and vision for the future.
Humanity has already demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to organize alliances for war; perhaps the time has come to demonstrate even greater intelligence by building a union dedicated to peace, progress, and civilizational advancement.
Respectfully,
Samuel Sales Saraiva
Washington, D.C.
United States of America
E-mail: samuelsalessaraiva@gmail.com