MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday urged Washington to help spur development in Central America to tackle the root causes of illegal immigration ahead of a meeting with U.S. officials over how to contain a jump in arrivals at the border.
Lopez Obrador said at a regular news conference that the best way to reduce migratory pressures was to improve living standards in countries that traditionally send most people to the United States.
“People don’t go to the United States for fun, they go out of necessity,” Lopez Obrador said, repeating a long-held belief. “There needs to be support for the development of Central America and the south of Mexico. Particularly Central America.”
For years, the bulk of people seeking to cross illegally into the United States have come from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and the poorer regions of southern Mexico.
The U.S. government on Monday said it was sending envoys, including White House border coordinator Roberta Jacobson, to Mexico and Guatemala to seek their help managing the surge. Initial talks are being held in Mexico on Tuesday.
U.S. officials are struggling to house and process an increasing number of unaccompanied children, many of whom have been stuck in jail-like border stations for days while they await placement in overwhelmed government-run shelters.
The White House on Monday underlined that the United States would work together with Mexico and Central American governments to mitigate the causes of migration, and to emphasize to their populations that now is not the time to go north.
Jacobson is being joined by Juan Gonzalez, the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, and Honduran-born diplomat Ricardo Zuniga, named this week as a special envoy focusing on Central America.
Zuniga becomes the first U.S. special envoy for the region since the Cold War-era conflicts of the 1980s.
U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has vowed to adopt a more humanitarian policy towards migrants than his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, as well as to open up a pathway to citizenship for many living in the United States.
Mexico says the change in policy has encouraged people to think that it is now easier to enter the United States.
Lopez Obrador emphasized this on Tuesday, and said Biden’s policies would take time to have the desired effect.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Grant McCool)
