Mexico: AMLO asks the US to invest in people, not walls

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obradorsaid Wednesday that the US Congress should focus on investing in people instead of building walls, hours before meeting with Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to discuss migration.

President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking help from López Obrador’s government to stem migratory flows and deal with record numbers of people trying to reach the US border, a key issue ahead of the US presidential election in November.

The meetings come after more than half a million migrants crossed the dangerous Darien Forest into Central America this year – double last year’s record – many of them fleeing crime, poverty and conflict to try to enter USA.

López Obrador, who last week assured the United States that Mexico would help alleviate migration pressures, said the US Congress should invest in the poor of Latin America and the Caribbean “instead of being there putting up barriers, barbed wire in the river or thinking about building walls.”

“It is more effective and more humane to invest in the development of people and that is what we have always proposed,” López Obrador said at a press conference. He added that he hopes next year’s US elections will bring the issue of migration to the forefront.

Former US President Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and restrict legal immigration if elected to a second four-year term.

Trump focused on building a wall on the border with Mexico during his first term and has pledged to close gaps in the border wall if he is re-elected. His administration built 725 kilometers of barriers along the 3,145-kilometer border, but much of that replaced existing structures.

López Obrador meets at noon in Mexico City with Blinken, who will also speak with the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alicia Bárcena. The US delegation includes Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

A State Department spokesperson said they will discuss unprecedented irregular migration in the Western Hemisphere and identify ways Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges.

On Wednesday, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers were slowly marching north from southern Mexico in a caravan hoping to reach the U.S. border, many of them with young children.

“We don’t have the need to return to our country if we don’t have anything there. If we had, we would not be migrating and we would not be invading a part that does not belong to us, but we want help.” said Venezuelan migrant Nohemía Zendejas as she walked with her four children, one of them carried in her arms.

“We come from afar, I come from Venezuela and Venezuela is broken“added the woman, visibly exhausted.