Washington. President Joe Biden was forced this Sunday to make a stopover at the border with Mexico before arriving in Mexico City for the summit with its Mexican and Canadian counterparts, making it clear that the management of migration and achieving greater cooperation from Mexico for border control southern United States are the political priorities for the US president on this tour.
The Republicans have forced the issue of controlling the migratory flow to remain at the center of the national political-electoral debateand although according to the spokesmen of the White House the agenda in meetings with the President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador It is broader and includes economic and commercial cooperation, the fight against drugs and climate change, among others. Everyone knows that the immigration issue is the main political concern for the United States.
The failure of the Biden government to promote real immigration reform, offer a response to the situation at the border and not only not fulfill its electoral promise to annul all the anti-immigrant measures of its predecessor but now expand some of the same strategies of donald trump it has the White House on the defensive.
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It is in this context that his announcement was made almost at the last minute of the stopover in El Paso, TexasBiden’s first visit in his two years as president to the border.
According to official figures, there have been more than 2.3 million arrests of immigrants made by the Border Patrol at the southern border in fiscal year 2022 (which ended at the end of September) – the highest number ever recorded and an increase of 37 percent over the previous year.
The figure includes multiple attempts by the same people. Many of the expulsions have been carried out under the so-called Title 42 that was promoted under the pretext of the covid-19 pandemic – something that experts affirm is a violation of international law that guarantees the right to request asylum.
Last Thursday, Biden announced a series of new measures that include severe restrictions on asylum in the United States for people from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. combined with new programs to facilitate the process to immigrate legally – including up to 30,000 in total from those four countries but only if they arrive with prior authorization and by plane.
What is not officially said is that three of those countries are subject to US policies designed to promote adverse economic and social conditions with the goal of instigating regime change, which are fueling this exodus to the United States. Thus, most of the recent migrants come from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. The other country, Haiti, suffers from deteriorating conditions that are directly related to the well-documented history of US policies and interventions.
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Last Thursday, Biden announced a series of new measures that include severe restrictions on asylum in the United States for people from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti.
The package of measures announced by Biden was criticized by immigrant rights advocates and human rights groups, some who denounced it as partly a continuation of some of the anti-immigrant measures of its predecessor. donald trumpwhile it was rejected by conservatives as insufficient to solve what everyone calls a “crisis” on the border.
“The set of measures are aimed at limiting and stopping the entry of people into the United States. It seeks to force people to flee in a planned and orderly manner, which is a contradiction.”said Oscar Chacon, executive director of Alianza Americas, a network of 56 immigrant organizations in 18 states.
Within the announcement of these measures last Thursday, Biden and the White House reported that some parts of this initiative included new agreements with the López Obrador government, including that Mexico will accept up to 30,000 migrants a month from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti expelled by the United States when attempting to cross illegally or if their asylum claims are rejected.
Biden’s measures also impose a condition that migrants who do not request asylum in the countries through which they pass en route to the United States will not be able to request asylum in the United States, something that was previously called a “safe third country”, and that Mexico has rejected. previously.
Biden reported that in joint operations, “our border patrol officers are attached to Mexican patrols to detect and raid people smuggling operations”, something that has resulted in more than 7,000 arrests in the last six months. At the same time, he reported that “joint patrols” of police officers have been established in Mexico and Guatemala to detect and share information on the location of smugglers.
For Biden, everything indicates that achieving agreements with Mexico to help reduce the migratory flow to the US border will be the top priority of his government at the summit. Nearly 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration, according to the average of polls reported by Real Clear Politics.
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Biden and the White House reported that some parts of this initiative included new agreements with the Obrador government, including that Mexico accept up to 30,000 migrants per month.
The other issues, security and trade
At the same time, Biden’s visit to Mexico takes place between official alerts from his government for US citizens about the insecurity conditions in the neighboring country, notes in the US media about the outbreak of violence around the capture of Ovid Guzmanand extensive recent reports in the national media on conflicts and bilateral failures regarding anti-narcotics cooperation that conclude that López Obrador’s strategy has not provided results, and accusing that Mexico is responsible for sending the fentanyl that is causing the death of almost two-thirds of 107,000 Americans from drug overdoses each year.
On Biden’s agenda during his visit, according to the White House, are the trade disputes that have erupted since the signing of the new trilateral trade agreement known as TMEC.
Among the most prominent are complaints from Washington and Ottawa over energy reform, and more recently, Washington’s dispute over Mexico’s plan to ban the import of genetically modified corn.
With information from La Jornada
