Mexican prez hails ‘humane’ Biden for opening ‘legal pathways’ for migrants
SAN FRANCISCO — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gushed Friday that President Biden was “humane” and “extraordinary” for opening new “legal pathways” for immigration — as the cost of hosting migrants has forced New York City to announce massive cuts to city services like education, sanitation and policing.
“We wish to thank President Biden because he is the first president in recent times to be opening legal pathways for migration,” the Mexican leader, known by his initials AMLO, said during a meeting with Biden on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference.
“It’s a humane way to address the migratory phenomenon,” he added.
“And I would also like to express and to say that he is the first president in the United States in recent times who has not built walls,” AMLO raved — invoking outdated information, as Biden’s administration in fact authorized 20 miles of new walling in South Texas last month after previously closing wall gaps near Yuma, Arizona.
“We need to continue to support one another so migration is an option and not enforced. We wish to assist the people in their countries of origin when they are forced to migrate,” the Mexican president continued.
“You have an extraordinary president in the United States — a man with convictions, a good man,” he concluded.
AMLO previously credited Biden in early 2021 with inspiring the rush to the border in his first year in office, which has continued without slowing in subsequent months.
“They see [Biden] as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” he said two months after Biden took office.
The reference to “legal pathways” described Biden’s “parole” program launched in January to allow a combined 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to enter the US each month to await later rulings on asylum claims.
In the first six months, nearly 160,000 migrants used the process, which requires background checks and a US sponsor, potentially reducing their need for public assistance.
The parole program, which congressional Republicans contend exceeds Biden’s legal authority, was launched as Biden administration officials increasingly allowed people who illegally crossed the US-Mexico border into the country to await asylum verdicts in badly backlogged proceedings.
So far, the new legal pathways haven’t prevented illegal border crossings from continuing to set highs — with a record-breaking 2.48 million apprehensions in fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30 — a figure that doesn’t include the migrants who eluded authorities.
Following the meeting, senior Biden administration officials said the two leaders would “continue active cooperation and … reaffirm their commitment to keep working on these issues.”
In lieu of providing details on what the leaders would do to counter the staggering migration numbers, the officials gave a rosy characterisation of the leaders’ work on the “very challenging issue,” with one official saying they “would argue that our cooperation with Mexico on migration has never been stronger.”
Biden and AMLO also discussed economic and climate issues, as well as the smuggling of fentanyl through Mexico and into the US, a senior administration official told reporters.
Fentanyl has killed roughly 200,000 Americans since Biden took office and the US leader has taken heat from Republicans for not doing more to halt the drug’s export from China and its transit across the US-Mexico border.
The discussion came after Biden met Wednesday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and said afterward that Xi agreed to curb the export of the precursors of the potent synthetic opioid to the Americas.
The illicit fentanyl that ends up in the United States typically comes from precursors sent from China to Mexico, where they are manufactured in illegal laboratories and snuck across the US southern border by Mexican cartels.
Biden discussed the conversation he had with Xi with the Mexican president and presented “any outcomes coming out of the president’s meeting to also work to address the challenge of precursor chemicals that are coming out of China.”
Ahead of the meeting, AMLO told Biden “we’re fully aware of the damage it poses to the United States youth” and “we are sincerely committed to continue to assist at our fullest capacity to prevent drug trafficking, namely the entrance of fentanyl and other chemical precursors.”
Pharmaceutical experts estimate that Fentanyl is roughly 100 times stronger than morphine, and can be purchased cheaply and cut into other illicit drugs – often leaving its users unaware that they are consuming the deadly chemicals until it’s too late.
The official said their fentanyl discussion also included their “efforts to combat transnational criminal organizations, address the public health challenges of drug demand and also find ways to invest in communities to provide alternatives to criminality and to the drug trade.”
The pair spent “quite some time on” the fentanyl issue, adding that addressing the crisis involves “not just going after criminal groups, but also addressing the importation of precursor chemicals at the ports.”
The officials said the work will also involve “going after the shipment [and] logistics corridors, and going after the financial and supply chains that fuel and and fund the operation of these transnational criminal organizations.”
“I would note as well that we are dealing with a broad criminal enterprise when it comes to this issue,” one of the officials said. “Often there’ll be organizations that are involved in both the trafficking of people and the trafficking of narcotics and the two leaders talked about needing to really address this challenge in a very holistic way.”
