U.S. President Joe Biden will meet his Mexican counterpart on Tuesday, July 12th, to discuss ways to stem Mexican migrant crossings as arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border reached their highest levels in over a decade, with both sides hoping to address jobs and investment.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced the meeting in Washington last month just ahead of the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, which he shunned because it excluded some left-leaning Latin American countries.
Most governments at the summit, including Mexico, signed a declaration intended to help the region regulate migrant flows, and a senior Biden administration official said the White House talks are intended to build upon those shared commitments.
The declaration did not include any U.S. pledges for additional work visas for Mexicans, and that will form part of Lopez Obrador’s discussions with Biden, said two Mexican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to share the information ahead of the official announcement.
Lopez Obrador said on July 6 that there was a grave shortage of workers in the United States and that he would seek to find a fix with Biden in the interests of both countries during the visit, his second to Washington since Biden took office.
“My vision is we’re going to agree on the labor issue and we’re going to put migrant flows in order, and we’re going to legalize hiring of workers,” he told a news conference.
Republican lawmakers have blamed Biden for the rising migrant numbers in the run-up to U.S. mid-term elections in November, and Texas, in particular, has sought to take the initiative in cracking down on illegal border crossings.
Lopez Obrador on Friday slammed Texas for one of its recent crackdown measures, saying he would urge people of Mexican origin in the United States not to vote for “anti-immigrant” candidates or parties in upcoming elections.
TYT Newsroom
