A "new era" between Mexico and the US to curb migration
US Vice President Kamala Harris visited Mexico City on Tuesday for the second and last stop on her first official trip abroad.. His visit represents a declaration of intent by the Biden administration, confident of being able to solve at the origin, the causes that push thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans every year to the gates of the United States.. After meeting on Monday in Guatemala with President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris signed a “bilateral cooperation memorandum” with the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador with which they seek to bring positions closer and give a new direction to the immigration policies promoted by Donald Trump.
Biden's number 2 said she envisions a “new era” between the two countries. “As you say, the United States and Mexico have a long relationship (…) based on a common border, on a common history. I firmly believe that we are entering a new era,” Harris told the Mexican president.
Hours before meeting with Kamala Harris, the Mexican president told the media that “we have been talking so that, jointly, through cooperation for development and security, we can respond to the migration phenomenon.”. The Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, qualified that the signing of the agreement “does not imply a transfer of resources”, but rather it will serve to “exchange experiences and proposals, since we have results that show that reducing poverty has a direct impact on forced migration”. The summit marks the first contact between two administrations that agree on their discourse, but differ on their strategy: while Mexico is committed to providing funds directly, the US prefers to link its aid to the fight against corruption and violence.
The Mexican government has spent almost three years promoting cooperation projects in the south of the country and several Central American countries and, now, it seeks the US to become involved in them. The best known is 'Sembrando Vida', a program that aims to create 200,000 jobs and reforest the dry corridor of Central America, one of the regions that generates the most poverty and emigration in the entire region.. For the moment, the Biden administration has not specified whether or not it will support this project, but it did announce, last January, its intention to allocate 4,000 million dollars “to stop forced migration” in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. .
The arrival of thousands of undocumented immigrants at the gates of the US, last March, was the first major government crisis for Joe Biden and his vice president, responsible for immigration issues, was highly criticized for not visiting the border at that time.. After the pandemic temporarily frozen asylum claims and border apprehensions, this year could break all records. The Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees has confirmed that, last May, the number of refugee applications for the entire year 2020 was already exceeded, with more than 40,000.
The meeting between Harris and AMLO has also served to accelerate the plan to reopen the land border between the two countries. The US administration has promised to send one million Johnson & Johnson vaccines to its neighbor to the south so that they can be applied to inhabitants, between the ages of 18 and 40, who live in one of the 40 municipalities in the border area.. These doses could cover around a third of the inhabitants of that age range and, following this plan, the Mexican authorities are confident that, by mid-June, close to 8 million inhabitants could already be immunized, helping to reactivate the economy of area. Before returning to Washington and closing her first international trip, the US vice president also held a meeting with businesswomen and social leaders from the Mexican capital.