(Washington) The head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken left for Mexico on Wednesday to try to find solutions to a new influx of migrants at the border, the subject of a burning political debate in the United States.
This rare trip during the holidays comes at a time when Republican elected officials in Congress are demanding an agreement on immigration with the Biden government in exchange for their support for a new aid package for Ukraine.
In recent weeks, some 10,000 people a day have attempted to cross the U.S. southern border illegally, nearly double the numbers recorded before the pandemic. And a caravan of thousands of migrants left southern Mexico on Sunday to try to reach the United States.
Overwhelmed by the influx, American authorities have had to close border crossings to deal with migrants attempting illegal crossings.
Antony Blinken is due to meet Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico City on Wednesday. The Secretary of State will be accompanied by the Minister of Homeland Security, responsible in particular for border police, Alejandro Mayorkas, and the Homeland Security Advisor, Liz Sherwood-Randall.
President Lopez Obrador, who spoke by telephone with Joe Biden on Thursday, December 21, pledged to strengthen measures to restrain migrants in the south of the country, on the border with Guatemala.
The American delegation must discuss with Mr. Lopez Obrador “the urgent need for legal (immigration) channels and the strengthening of coercive actions”, according to the spokesperson for the American Department of State Matthew Miller.
Nazi rhetoric
Mexico, after agreements with Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump, welcomes on its soil migrants seeking to enter the United States.
The former Republican president, who is preparing to face Joe Biden at the polls in November 2024, recently redoubled his attacks against migrants, accusing them of “poisoning the blood” of the United States, comments which according to his detractors make echoing Nazi rhetoric.
In this tense political context, Democrats are trying to find an agreement on immigration with Republicans in Congress in order to simultaneously approve spending of $61 billion to help Kyiv in its war with Moscow.
The White House has warned that it will “run out of resources” for Ukraine “by the end of the year”.
In the negotiations, the Biden administration notably proposed funding 1,300 more positions within the border police.
“Rational decision”
Washington will undoubtedly ask Mexico to still keep migrants on their soil, for example by giving them work permits, estimates Andrew Rudman, researcher specializing in Mexico at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.
“The Biden administration is seeking to show, for domestic political reasons, that they are doing everything possible” in this matter, he explains. But “one of the challenges is that everyone wants a solution right away to a global problem that has existed for a long time.” However, “there is no magic wand”.
“Most of these people emigrate because they have made a rational decision: their life will be better in the United States,” he adds.
The majority of them are fleeing Central American countries ravaged by poverty, violence and natural disasters.
In recent months, an increase in the number of migrants from Haiti, devastated by gang violence, and from Venezuela, fled by more than 7 million people according to the UN since the collapse of its economy, has been noted.
Met on Tuesday by AFP in Comaltitlan, in the caravan that left southern Mexico, María Alicia Ulloa said she left Honduras to “provide a better life for (her) children”. If she were to be blocked on the way, she would return to her country, where “there is crime and little work,” she confided from the side of the road, backpack on her shoulders.