More migrants

The Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Presidency of Mexico / EFE

The relationship between Mexico and the United States is going through one of the most tense moments in memory.

However, the first contacts between the president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, illuminate a new migration strategy that, if implemented, would bring

positive

consequences

, not only for both countries. also for the region, and would reduce the criminalization of migrants, a common trend of the Trump Administration.

Neither the mistaken decision of López Obrador not to congratulate Biden until the Electoral College recognizes his victory, nor the fact that the Government of Mexico has put a stop to the presence of foreign agents in his country, with the Americans being the most affected. They have prevented the first conversation between the two leaders from transmitting a halo of hope.

Both leaders stressed the need to encourage a new immigration policy that, in practice, would mean a break with the heavy-handed discourse with migrants promoted by Trump since his arrival at the White House in 2016, with the promise of building a wall in the border with Mexico and the continuous attacks on both Mexican and Central American migrants.

The challenge facing both countries is enormous, not only because of the internal costs that reversing current policies will entail;

Also because an increase in migration is expected from Central American countries, whose economic conditions are even worse after the pandemic and the fact that their inhabitants have been severely hit by two hurricanes that left entire communities underwater and thousands of families homeless.

Biden, as López Obrador did at the time, comes to the government with the promise of improving the treatment of migrants after four years of disgrace.

The Mexican president had to reverse his intention to open the southern border and tightened his immigration policies after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican products if he failed to stop the transit of migrants.

In between, an enormous Marshall Plan that the Government of Mexico had designed to assimilate migrants in their country was adrift and for the United States to encourage private investment in southern Mexico and increase aid to Central America.

This plan requires the necessary collaboration of the Central American governments, many of them with dubious credibility in terms of respect for legality and human rights, but above all, a new strategy between the governments of Mexico and the United States.

López Obrador and Biden have to walk on that path.