López Obrador affirms that Biden promised 4,000 million dollars for Central America in his phone call

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador reported this Saturday that his US counterpart, Joe Biden, promised to deliver $ 4 billion in aid to Central America to stop migration to the north.

This was one of the issues that the leaders addressed in a phone call on Friday night, along with the fight against the pandemic.

"Cooperation for development is very important, that it is possible to support the Central American countries so that support is delivered directly ... to the inhabitants of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala," said the president this morning in a tour of the State of Nuevo León.

Biden and López Obrador have left behind for now the diplomatic turmoil of recent weeks and have adopted a cordial tone to lay the new foundations for the bilateral relationship.

The Mexican thanked the democrat for the immigration reform that makes starting his government a priority.

"We are going to respectfully exhort the legislators of the United States to approve this initiative and to regularize the situation of Mexican migrants," he said from the municipality of Linares.

As he claimed to have done with Donald Trump, the Mexican president says he has shared his vision of migration with the new occupant of the White House.

"We want migration to be optional, not forced, that people from Central American countries, southern Mexico, our country, have options, have the possibility of getting ahead where they were born," he said.

Since December, Biden had raised the need to order and strengthen the management of the shared border and find a solution for asylum seekers stranded in Mexico.

Economic support to the Central American countries of the Northern Triangle decreased by 30% between 2016 and 2019 due to cuts from the Republican government.

Aid to southern countries was only 0.035% of the budget.

"Everything indicates that relations will be good for the good of our peoples and nation," said López Obrador on Friday, who answered the call in Nuevo León accompanied by the foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, a translator, and Alfonso Romo, who left his post in December as head of the Office of the President.

López Obrador has taken the opportunity to once again congratulate Biden on his coming to power and affirm that there is "will" to work together, according to a statement from the Government of Mexico.

The United States also gave its approval for Esteban Moctezuma, former Secretary of Education, to take over as the new Mexican ambassador in Washington, an appointment that has yet to go through the Senate.

López Obrador was the second world leader to receive a phone call from the White House.

First on Biden's call list was Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Wednesday that the priority was to speak with "partners and allies."

"[The president] believes that it is important to rebuild these relationships to address the challenges and threats we are facing in the world," the spokeswoman said.

Biden's decision to reach out to his neighbors, his main trading partners after China, sends a new message to distance himself from Trump's foreign policy.

Words such as "cordial" and "mutual respect" occupy a central place in the statement of the Mexican Government on the call this Friday afternoon.

After several weeks of tension over the case of General Salvador Cienfuegos, arrested in October in California and exonerated in Mexico in the middle of the month, López Obrador has opted in recent days for a more conciliatory tone and supported Biden's efforts to dismantle several policies. Trump immigration.

An avalanche of decrees from the Democrat ordered that the path to give citizenship to

Dreamers

- as young people without papers who migrated since they were children are known -

be resumed

and the construction of the border wall, a insignia of the Administration of its predecessor.

Biden has also opened the door to an immigration reform to regularize the situation of 11 million undocumented immigrants that Mexico has persecuted for more than two decades.

We spoke with President Biden, he was kind and respectful.

We deal with issues related to migration, # COVID19 and cooperation for development and well-being.

Everything indicates that relations will be good for the good of our peoples and nations.

pic.twitter.com/QEVK4UgFuo

- Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) January 23, 2021

There was no mention, at least in the statements of the Mexican government, about security and fighting organized crime.

López Obrador seems to accept Biden's proposal to put the focus of the bilateral relationship on the immigration issue.

The Mexican president had said just a day before the call that it was not "necessary" to speak by phone with Biden, arguing that they were working on a common agenda, which had already been discussed in another call on December 19.

"The president-elect emphasized the need to revitalize cooperation between the United States and Mexico to ensure orderly and safe migration," said Biden's transition team.

The pandemic has also opened a front of understanding between both governments.

There was talk of collaborating in the fight against covid-19 and discussing the new requirements that the United States imposed on international travelers, such as a negative coronavirus test and a preventive quarantine.

There were no further details.

"We are entering a new era," Trudeau told reporters before his call, "much more aligned on values, priorities and the work that needs to be done."

Canadian officials told CTV television that the call with Trudeau lasted more than 30 minutes, "longer than any they have had with Trump."

The same sources speak of a virtual or face-to-face meeting next month between Biden and his Canadian counterpart.

There have been no signs, however, of a similar encounter with López Obrador, at least in official statements.

To the bulky agenda between Mexico and the United States, which includes the fight against drug trafficking and the management of migratory phenomena such as caravans, analysts foresee a greater emphasis of the Biden presidency on issues that had been relegated such as climate change and respect to human rights.

The T-MEC, the trade agreement that the three countries renegotiated and which came into force last July, will also occupy a priority place with new rules of the game for trade.

It is, at heart, a first affinity survey on the regional scene, after four erratic years of the Trump administration and one of the most complex transitions in the White House in memory.