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The American presidents, Joe Biden, and Mexican, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, met on January 9 to discuss illegal migration and fentanyl trafficking.
The differences in approach between the United States and Mexico in the face of the migration crisis surfaced this Monday during the meeting between presidents Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
AMLO denounces the “disdain towards Latin America and the Caribbean”…
At the presidential palace in Mexico City, López Obrador said that it is “the time to put an end to this oblivion, this abandonment, this disdain for Latin America and the Caribbean as opposed to the good-neighbor policy of that titan of freedom who was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt” (1933-1945).
Also read: Biden unveils his new immigration policy: ‘Don’t show up at the border’
AMLO had advanced that he would ask Biden to increase investment in the nations where the incessant migration of undocumented people to the United States originates. “I know that it is a complex and controversial initiative and I am aware that its implementation involves numerous difficulties, but in my opinion there is no better way to guarantee the prosperous, peaceful and fair future that our peoples deserve,” he said. He even stated that there is no other leader other than Biden who “could carry out this company.”
In his speech after that call, open to the press, Biden replied that his country has “spent billions of dollars” in the Western Hemisphere alone in the last 15 years, and must address various fronts around the world. “Unfortunately our responsibility simply does not end in the Western Hemisphere,” she stressed, noting that “the United States provides more foreign aid than any other country.”
…and Biden “the fentanyl plague”
As expected, Biden also raised concerns about fentanyl, a synthetic drug 50 times more powerful than heroin, manufactured and trafficked by violent Mexican cartels, with precursors coming from China. The president denounced the “fentanyl plague, which has killed 100,000 Americans so far,” and evoked the challenge of facing that threat together.
Nearly two-thirds of the 108,000 overdose deaths in the United States in 2021 involved synthetic opioids. And in 2022 alone, more fentanyl was seized than would be needed to kill the entire population of the United States, according to the US drug enforcement agency (DEA).
During the meeting, arms trafficking was also discussed, at a time when Mexico is promoting two lawsuits against US manufacturers, as anticipated by a senior US official.
After their bilateral meeting, Biden and AMLO will hold the North American Summit on Tuesday together with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who arrived in the Mexican capital on Monday.
