Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador on Saturday asked his American counterpart, Joe Biden, to lift trade sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba after the death of nine Cuban migrants in an accident in Guatemala.
During a telephone conversation, Andrés Lopez Obrador urged Joe Biden to
“suspend sanctions against Venezuela”
and
“lift the blockade against Cuba”
in order to reduce migratory flows from the two countries, the Mexican presidency indicated in a statement.
“Any law adopted in this area which ignores the causes of the migratory phenomenon and does not address it is doomed to remain a dead letter
,” the left-wing president declared to the American president, according to the press release.
For its part, the White House indicated that the two parties had agreed to
“continue their productive partnership”
on migration challenges.
Toughening of American migration policy
This exchange comes at a key moment, given the imminent announcement of a pact negotiated by a group of Republican and Democratic senators that would significantly toughen US migration policy.
Although it remains to be seen whether it will pass Congress, Joe Biden has already announced that it constitutes
"the most severe package of reforms"
in the history of the country and that it would
"shut down the border”
with Mexico
“when it is submerged”
.
The details of the bipartisan pact are not known, but everything suggests that it will toughen immigration and asylum policy.
This is in fact a condition imposed by the Republicans in exchange for the release to Congress of a financial extension of some 100 billion dollars to maintain aid to Ukraine and Israel and to strengthen the border with Mexico. .
Eleven people, including nine Cuban migrants, were killed Saturday in the collision between a van, a motorcycle and a truck on a road in western Guatemala.
The Cuban migrants
“were crossing the territory of Guatemala and were heading towards the United States
,” the Guatemalan Migration Institute said in a statement.
With more than 3,000 km of border with the United States, Mexico is a country of transit and detention for migrants, mainly from Central American countries plagued by violence and poverty (Honduras, Guatemala, Salvador), the Caribbean (Haiti, Cuba) or Venezuela, which come up against the restrictive policies of the United States.