UNITED STATES—During a virtual meeting on Monday, March 1, President Joe Biden met with the President Andrés Manuel Lόpez Obrador of Mexico to come to an agreement on a new immigrant labor policy that would bring immigrants from Mexico and Central America legally to work in the U.S.
Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveal that U.S., unemployment rates have skyrocketed.
President Biden read from a notebook during the meeting with President Lόpez Obrador. He informed Lόpez Obrador that he still had his son’s rosary beads from many trips to Mexico.
“In the Obama-Biden administration, we made a commitment that we look at Mexico as an equal, not as somebody who is south of our border. You are equal. And what you do in Mexico and how you succeed impacts dramatically on what the rest of the hemisphere will look like,” Biden stated.
President Lόpez Obrador indicated his mutual respect for Our Lady of Guadalupe [making reference to his Catholic faith and devotion to the rosary beads and the Virgin Mary].
Prior to January 2021 statistics by BLS showed the lowest unemployment rate in decades. Under the Trump administration, jobs were brought back to the U.S. from Mexico including those in the auto industry. Jobs in the petroleum industry, on oil rigs and pipelines, were brought back to the U.S. and Canada.
The Biden administration closed the Keystone pipeline, were 11,000 jobs were initially and thousands of more positions such as union jobs and subcontractors of Keystone pipeline were lost.
According to reports, Lόpez Obrador was going to suggest a program that would bring anywhere from 600,000-800,000 immigrants annually to the U.S. to work legally.
Biden promised on the campaign trail he would repeal former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, which he has done.
“We are going to deal with this issue: You need Mexican and Central American workers. So let’s put order to the migration flow, making it legal to guarantee the workers that they don’t risk their lives and that their human rights are protected,” Lόpez Abrador stated to President Biden over the weekend.
Biden admitted “[We] haven’t been perfect neighbors to each other.” He added that we stronger and safer “when we work together.” Lόpez Obrador responded that with constant dialogue, “I know our relations in the future will be even better.”
