MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday he will insist that the United States approve immigration reform to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants at the Summit of the Americas.
“I will continue to support it because it was a commitment even if it was a long time ago, the first commitment was made by President Barack Obama (2009-2017) to regularization and President Biden was vice president and we talked about it in the issue Year 2012,” said the President.
López Obrador indicated that amid controversy over the alleged exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, he was still “analyzing” his attendance at the Summit of the Americas, which will be held June 6-10 in Los Angeles, California.
If he were to attend the summit, the President indicated that he would like to hold a rally with Mexicans at La Placita Olvera in Los Angeles, considered the “cradle of Latinos” in that city.
The president vowed that he would once again campaign before Biden to “regulate compatriots” living in the United States, where nearly 5 million of the 10.5 million undocumented immigrants are of Mexican origin, according to the Pew Research Center.
“Migrants from different countries can arrive and US businessmen prefer Mexican workers, they contribute a lot, besides there is no labor force in the United States and we are holding talks to organize the migration flow,” López Obrador said.
Hundreds of thousands of cases are in the federal offices in the backlog.
The President, who held his morning news briefing in the northern state of Sonora on the Arizona border, lamented that immigration reform in the United States was lagging behind the campaigning for next November’s midterm elections.
For this reason, he reiterated his warning to expose politicians from both parties who use anti-Mexican or anti-immigrant rhetoric during election campaigns.
“We will not allow Mexican migrants to be polled in campaigns supposedly to win votes, we do not accept xenophobia, we do not accept racism,” he said.
The move is being taken to clear backlogs in immigration courts. To see more from Telemundo, visit https://www.nbc.com/networks/telemundo
“And if a party, a candidate, thinks he’ll get votes by speaking badly about the Mexican, well, we’re going to denounce those facts so our compatriots there know who’s who,” he added.
The president also asked to consider the strength of Mexicans in the United States, estimating that there are already 40 million in that country, plus undocumented immigrants, regular migrants and children of immigrants.
“It turns out that there are 4 million Cuban brothers in the United States and their representatives even have great influence in guiding US policy towards the rest of the world, but there are 4 million,” he compared.