Irregular migration is discussed at a high-level meeting between officials from the United States and Mexico

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met this Wednesday to tackle the recovery of the migration flow. prompted the United States to close its border ports for a few days this month.

The meeting, urgently called at the National Palace in Mexico City, hosted a delegation from Washington consisting of Blinken; Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House National Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall. It occurs in the middle of advance of a caravan of more than 6,000 migrants and twenty nationalities from the southern border of Mexico, where they ask both governments to agree on measures to enable their transit.

This group, which left on Christmas Eve with nearly 10,000 people as the largest caravan of the year, has advanced about 70 kilometers from Tapachula, on Mexico’s southern border, to Escuintla, a municipality in Chiapas state.

The undocumented immigrants and accompanying activists demanded a dialogue with the government of Mexico.

Before the meeting, Center for Human Dignification (CDH) coordinator Luis Rey García Villagrán, who is escorting the caravan, said the southern border “is not anyone’s backyard” and that migrants “are not currency.”

Exodus from poverty

“We don’t believe there is any benefit (from the meeting), we believe there must be reasoning and a human reason to alleviate this problem, which is this exodus from poverty,” he told EFE.

The meeting, scheduled just a week ago, discussed immigration issues, especially the new upsurge in the flow of people from Central and South America and the Caribbean seeking to settle in the United States through Mexican territory.

In this sense, López Obrador insisted during his morning press conference that the US Congress should invest in addressing the causes of migration, rather than building walls, although he positively appreciated the immigration policy of Joe Biden’s administration for offering of immigration visas.

Meanwhile, the United States is seeking help from the Mexican government to stem the flow of migration and cope with the record number of people trying to reach U.S. territory, especially ahead of the country’s upcoming presidential elections in November.

Immigration record

The group is making progress as December sees historic numbers of people trying to enter the United States at the border with Mexico, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Tuesday announced the arrival of more than 2.2 million migrants from January to November has confirmed.

Of the 10,000 migrants who started their journey last Sunday, they have spread out in different groups in the municipalities of Mapastepec, Pijijiapan and Arriaga, but the bulk of about 6,000 are in Escuintla.

The Mexican CDH activist warned that next Thursday the largest group would walk towards Mapastepec in the early morning, traveling another 35 kilometers and holding a sit-in for a period of 24 hours so that the National Migration Institute (INM) could be present. .

Without a positive response from the Mexican government, they will remain in this group, which they have dubbed ‘Exodus from Poverty’, until they leave Chiapas and go to the north of the country. (JO)