Mexico and the US prepare a joint plan for job creation in Central America

The Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard (on the left), and the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, in their meeting this Tuesday. POOL (REUTERS)

Address the structural causes of migration.

Achieve a joint investment and job creation plan for Central America, the territory of origin of the vast majority of migrants.

That is the vision shared by the US and Mexico that little by little is materializing in specific agreements and strategies on the bilateral agenda.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced on Tuesday a new advance in that direction.

"We agreed to prepare a common initiative for the creation of jobs in Central America," Ebrard announced at a press conference in Washington after meeting with US authorities in the run-up to the ninth Summit of the Americas, to be held in June in Los Angeles.

Ebrard's visit has continued the telephone conversation held last week between the US president, Joe Biden, and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with the focus on migratory flows and the rapprochement of positions in the face of the summit.

The negotiations take place in a climate of growing tension on the border.

In 2021, all records of illegal crossings into the United States in recent decades were broken and the latest official data for this year indicates that around 7,000 people are detained every day by the Border Patrol.

The Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, stressed before his meeting with the Mexican Foreign Minister: "We face an unprecedented migratory challenge throughout our hemisphere."

In addition, he emphasized the negotiating spirit with the southern neighbor and the shared framework when it comes to finding solutions.

“Collaboration with Mexico is absolutely vital.

It is also vital to help build a better future and better opportunities for people throughout the Americas, which will ultimately have the greatest impact on migration in the long term,” he said.

Blinken did not appear after the meeting.

His spokeswoman, Ned Price, limited herself to saying that the two discussed preparations for the Summit of the Americas and collaboration between the two countries to address the roots of the problem of irregular migration.

“Secretary Blinken highlighted how the Summit of the Americas will build on the strong collaboration between the United States and Mexico, especially as it relates to Summit themes such as democracy, clean energy, climate change, technology and resistance to pandemics,” he added.

Cooperation

The commitment to a joint plan to respond to the migratory phenomenon, based on the pillars of development cooperation, represents a paradigm shift with respect to the time of Donald Trump, where diplomatic threats and the police approach prevailed.

The Biden Administration opened a new stage in the negotiations, more focused on addressing poverty, violence and corruption, assumed to be the main causes of migration and institutional weakness in the region.

The United States announced last December multimillion-dollar investments in Central America as part of that effort.

That is the framework shared in the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the US, which even has the endorsement of ECLAC, the UN's economic organization for Latin America.

Last year, the agency presented a Marshall Plan for Central America, a roadmap with defined programs and funding forecasts.

For now, the project remains stalled while waiting to resolve differences over investment methods.

The Mexican foreign minister proposed to Blinken the holding of a jointly organized conference in Central America to try to articulate these efforts.

Return at the border

The backdrop for the negotiations this Tuesday has also been the presumed withdrawal of the so-called Title 42, a guideline applied by Trump in the midst of a pandemic that allows the immediate return of migrants at the Mexican border under pretexts of health security.

A measure that will multiply by the arrivals of undocumented migrants at the border, according to official US forecasts.

The Democratic administration initially planned to lift the ban in late May.

But the decision triggered a showdown with Republican governors and has become one of the central issues in the run-up to November's midterm elections.

Conservative governors in Arizona, Louisiana and Missouri took the matter to court, and a first federal court ruling halted the government's attempt to lift the measure for two weeks.

Biden himself was on Thursday in favor of maintaining the regulations if the justice so decides.

A new hearing is scheduled for May 13.

The Secretary of National Security of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, another of the Mexican Foreign Minister's interlocutors this Tuesday, warned this week that the lifting of Title 42 will cause "extraordinary tension."

The Mexican foreign minister acknowledged that this has been one of the topics of conversation and that they have agreed to create a specific working group to follow up on it.

In addition to the migration issue, the Mexican foreign minister has insisted to his US counterpart that he is in favor of inviting Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the Summit of the Americas, without apparently receiving a US response.

The United States has hinted that it will not invite those countries to the Summit.

"We know they have a different position to this day," Ebrard admitted.

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