Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has challenged US counterpart Joe Biden to improve life across the region, telling him that he “holds the key in his hand,” during a meeting that came ahead of the three-way talks between Mexico, Washington and Ottawa known as the "Three Amigos" summit.
“This is the moment for us to do away with this abandonment, this disdain, and this forgetfulness for Latin America and the Caribbean,” AMLO said on Monday.
Biden responded by pointing out that Washington had spent "tens of billions of dollars" over the past 15 years on the region.
(L to R) US First Lady Jill Biden, US President Joe Biden, Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Mexico's First Lady Beatriz Gutierrez Muller attend a welcome ceremony at Palacio Nacional (National Palace) in Mexico City, on January 9, 2023
© AFP 2023 / NICOLAS ASFOURI
“The United States provides more foreign aid than every other country just about combined. Unfortunately, our responsibility just doesn't end in the western hemisphere,” POTUS added.
The showdown was followed by Obrador striking a more positive tone later on Monday as he touched upon migration-related issues. The Mexican president pledged that he would consider accepting more migrants expelled by the US than previously announced in line with a new White House policy on migration.
“We don’t want to anticipate things, but this is part of what we are going to talk about at the summit. We support this type of measures to give people options, alternatives,” Obrador stressed, adding that “the numbers may be increased.”
The Biden administration announced last week the policy of offering legal entry for up to 30,000 migrants and asylum seekers a month from Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela. The policy would allow officials to rapidly expel up to 30,000 migrants from those nations each month to Mexico if they attempt to cross the US border illegally.
The deal was clinched between Mexico City and Washington amid Biden's first-ever visit to the US southern border last Sunday to assess federal immigration enforcement efforts to manage the record-breaking surge of migrants arriving in America.
The US has seen two consecutive record-breaking years of illegal crossings into its territory since Biden assumed office in January 2021. More than two million illegal crossings into the US were recorded in 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
As for the "Three Amigos" summit, the gathering of Biden, Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to see a series of talks on migration, trade, climate change and drug trafficking.
The summit comes as Canada and the US accuse Obrador of violating a free trade pact by favoring Mexico’s state-run utility over power plants built by foreign and private investors.
On the other hand, Trudeau and Obrador are concerned about Biden’s efforts to ramp up domestic manufacturing, prompting fears that the US’ immediate neighbors could be left behind.