The migration crisis that Mexico and the United States are going through has put diplomatic relations on alert. Washington has decided to send a delegation to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador this Wednesday to negotiate the measures they will take to stop the massive influx of people to the border, which has seen an unprecedented increase in recent weeks has experienced. The delegation led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives after Joe Biden asked his Mexican counterpart to maintain communication. The situation, which was already a hot potato for the US government, worsened between late November and early December. An unusual increase in illegal border crossings, at 31% according to US Border Patrol (CBP) data, has led to the closure of some border crossings to stop the huge influx of people crossing part of the continent to get there.
The request for attention came from Washington. Last Thursday, Biden and López Obrador held a telephone conversation at the request of the American President in connection with the umpteenth migration crisis that had been triggered. The numbers have not stopped rising so far this year. This week alone, more than 10,000 irregular migrants were apprehended at border crossings every day. “Both [presidentes] “We agreed that additional enforcement actions are urgently needed to allow key ports of entry across our shared border to reopen,” the White House said.
In the negotiations that Mexico will hold with the US delegation, which will also include Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and US National Security Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, one of the priorities will be the reopening of border crossings . In its statement, the Mexican government “emphasized the need to reopen border crossings as quickly as possible to ensure dynamic trade flows and improve economic relations,” it said in a statement. “In addition, there will be greater collaboration with the US delegation to address the structural causes of migration based on the results of the Palenque meeting.”
Demands from a dozen Latin American and Caribbean governments at the meeting in the southern Mexican city center on lifting sanctions that the White House maintains against Cuba and Venezuela. The leaders present, which included not Biden but Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Cuban Miguel Díaz-Canel, concluded that the “unilateral coercive measures” imposed on some US countries were “unilateral Coercive measures” The region contributed significantly to triggering migration to the United States.
The last time Biden and López Obrador met was last month in California at a summit of Asia-Pacific countries. “The invitation of the Mexican President continues the agreement reached by both leaders in San Francisco regarding the appreciation of the positive contribution of the Mexican community in the United States and the belief that the immigration problem can only be solved by solving the problem can find an effective answer.” structural causes. in the countries of origin,” the Mexican government said this Friday.
The López Obrador government faces a double immigration problem. On the one hand, Mexico is the country through which thousands of migrants travel every month to reach the United States. On the other hand, it is faced with the massive exodus of Mexicans who have joined the caravans to reach the north illegally. The executive branch estimates that of the 307,000 people held at the border by the end of the year, nearly 75,000 will be from Mexico.
These unprecedented numbers have led to the closure of border crossings. On November 27, the United States decided to close the passage of people and vehicles from Mexico on the bridge connecting Piedras Negras in Coahuila to Eagle Pass in Texas. CBP said it made this decision due to the increase in irregular entries. The point remained closed until this Friday, when it was reopened for railway use only. For the same reason, on December 4, they closed the crossing from Sonoyta, Sonora, to Lukeville, Arizona. And on December 9, the pedestrian crossing from El Chaparral in Tijuana, Baja California, to San Ysidro, California, one of the busiest borders in the world, was closed.
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