Biden tries to reset relationship with Mexico
As President Joe Biden looks to dismantle the last administration’s hardline immigration agenda, he worked Monday to build a partnership with someone who found an unexpected understanding with Donald Trump: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Biden and Lopez Obrador met for a virtual bilateral meeting, with immigration, the coronavirus pandemic and climate issues on the agenda. Looming large was how the two leaders would get along in what has become an increasingly complicated relationship.
“We haven’t been perLopez fect neighbors to each other,” Biden acknowledged in brief remarks at the start of his video conference meeting with the Mexican president.
Lopez Obrador, for his part, told Biden that he was thankful that the new president was “willing to maintain good relations for the good of our people in
North America.”
The Mexican president also gave a wink to a rueful observation attributed to Jose de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori, the Mexican general who served seven terms as the country’s president, about the two countries’ relationship: “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the U.S.”
“I can now say ‘It’s wonderful for Mexico to be close to God and not so far from the United States,’ ” Obrador said.
Lopez Obrador came to the meeting with his own checklist of priorities, including pressing Biden to give pharmaceutical company Pfizer permission to sell his country vaccine produced in the United States, something that Canada has also requested from the White House.
“We want to have an answer about a request we made,” Lopez Obrador told reporters at his daily news conference, hours before speaking with Biden.
Ahead of the meeting, White House officials reiterated that Biden remained focused on first vaccinating U.S. citizens before turning his attention to assisting other nations. Biden, in a brief exchange with reporters at the start of the meeting, said the two leaders would discuss vaccines.
The two sides following the meeting issued a joint statement pledging greater cooperation on addressing migration, the coronavirus pandemic, and climate change.
The effort to reset the U.S.-Mexico relationship under Biden comes as a flood of migrants have rushed to the border since his victory in November.
Biden has backed a bill to give legal status and a path to citizenship to the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Biden also broke with Trump by supporting efforts to allow hundreds of thousands of people who came to the U.S. illegally as young children to remain in the country.
Border Patrol agents are apprehending an average of more than 200 children crossing the border without a parent per day, but nearly all 7,100 beds for immigrant children maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services are full.
As predicted, some Republicans have, with a Democrat in the White House, suddenly remembered their concern for deficit spending and will not vote for the COVID Relief Bill, complaining that it is too large. (Deficit clocks will soon reappear).
Given that Democrats will need to resort to the budget-reconciliation process anyway, why did they not choose at the same time to fulfill another Biden promise: reverse most of the Trump tax giveaway?
If the fight against COVID is the war that Trump declared it to be, surely such an emergency situation would call for some belt-tightening and for everyone to pay their fair share. Tying both pieces of legislation would have put Republicans in the awkward position of voting against COVID relief and keeping deficits down.
It is not too late for Senate Democrats to add the tax changes, especially given that the parliamentarian has ruled against the inclusion of the minimum wage change as it is not directly related to the budget.
– Robert Kemper, Pinecrest
Re the Feb. 26 story “Police clear cop who shot peaceful protester in face with rubber bullet:” I recently took a class to obtain a concealed-carry permit.
The police officer teaching the class made it perfectly clear that any person discharging a weapon is responsible for the consequences, intended or not, and could include prosecution and, quite possibly, jail time.
So I am struggling with the decision by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in exonerating officer Eliezer Ramos. Its Internal Affairs department investigation determined Ramos “did nothing wrong” when he shot LaToya Ratlieff because it was not “intentional.”
– Rich Szymanski,
West Kendall
STRONG WINDS
Re the Feb. 25 online story “Due to climate change, Miami Beach moving away from palm trees to create more shade:” Aesthetics aside, when a Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricane roars through South Florida, how many of those shade trees will still be standing? And how many palm trees will be standing?
There is good reason why palm trees proliferate in tropical and subtropical environs. It is called survival.
– Julian Kanter,
Tamarac