Mexico City becomes the epicenter of important meetings between senior officials from the United States, Mexico and Canada, who come together with a clear objective: combat fentanyl trafficking and strengthen cooperation on immigration issues.
Over the next two days, exhaustive discussions will take place to advance previous commitments and reach new agreements aimed at curbing drug trafficking, preventing the flow of arms into Mexico from the United States and improve the situation of migrants.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador highlighted this Monday that the issues that will be addressed today with Joe Biden’s envoy, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, will be migration, drug trafficking, arms trafficking and cooperation for development.
“The relationship with the government of President Biden is very good, the relationship is so good that I think Mrs. Elizabeth has come about four times this year,” the president said at his morning press conference at the National Palace.
“He has been in constant communication with us and there are very good results from the cooperation work, we are working very well with the United States government, there are no substantive differences, quite, quite well.”
The chief executive pointed out that the seizure of drugs in Mexico is quite a lot, as had not been seen in a long time
“A lot of cocaine is being seized, a lot of chemicals, also fentanyl, much more than what was done before, much more, it is that before (…) the drug traffickers had the power,” said the president, who said that the delegations will report the meetings finished.
The President specified that this day the meeting will be bilateral Mexico-United States, and tomorrow trilateral together with Canada.
López Obrador pointed out that cooperation must continue and issues such as migration, support programs for Central America and work visas that are being applied for migrants should be followed up of some countries that have given very good results in ordering the migratory flow.
He stressed that for the first time the United States government is granting these work visas, for the first time a formal, legal channel is being opened so that the migrant can reach that country without having to go through Mexico, with all the risks that this implies.
The President pointed out that the United States government established a mechanism to request entry to that country and the request can be made in consulates, embassies, centers that have been established for this purpose in nations such as Colombia, Panama or Guatemala.
“There is a conduit, a road that did not exist. How did you enter the United States? Only risking to be able to cross the border. Now there is this mechanism,” said the man from Tabasco.
He said that close to 30,000 work visas have been issued in recent times for Ecuadorians, Haitians, Venezuelans, Colombians and Cubans, which has helped a lot and the results are very good and deportations have decreased.
Talk about migration and fentanyl
The meeting has a prominent US delegation, led by Sherwood-Randall, President Joe Biden’s senior national security adviser, who has vast experience in previous Democratic governments.
Accompanying her will be key figures such as Kemp Chester, Biden’s senior adviser on drug control, and Lisa Monaco, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as other senior officials from various government agencies.
These discussions stem from agreements previously reached in January, when Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President López Obrador met in what is known as the “Three Amigos Summit,” an informal meeting between North American leaders.
During this summit, it was agreed to create a specialized committee to combat the trafficking of fentanyl, a powerful painkiller that has caused the death of hundreds of people every day in the United States.
The fight against arms trafficking from the United States is another of the priority issues for Mexico in these meetings. It is estimated that around 200,000 firearms illegally enter Mexico from the neighboring country each year, posing a significant challenge to security and order in the region.
Migration
In the area of immigration, the United States and Mexico will seek to advance previous agreements to combat human trafficking and increase legal channels for migration to the United States.
The Biden administration has implemented measures to promote legal migration and reduce irregular immigration, such as the creation of a two-year humanitarian permit for citizens of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti.
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