Biden meets with Mexican president about migration
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden met virtually Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues.
“This is what I know, the United States and Mexico are stronger when we stand together,” Biden told López Obrador at the outset of the meeting, alluding to past differences between the two countries. “We’re safer when we work together. Whether it’s addressing the challenges of our shared border, or getting this pandemic under control.”
Mexico’s president had said he intended during the meeting to propose to Biden a new immigrant labor program that could bring 600,000 to 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants a year to work legally in the United States.
A senior Biden administration official declined to say whether the U.S. president would back or oppose the proposal, saying only that both countries agree on the need to expand legal pathways for migration. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Asked about the Mexican president’s proposal. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that reinstituting the “Bracero” program would require action by Congress.
The original Bracero program allowed Mexicans to work temporarily in the United States to fill labor shortages during World War II and for a couple of decades after the war. López Obrador said the U.S. economy needs Mexican workers because of “their strength, their youth.”
On Monday, López Obrador said his new proposal would be a program not only for agriculture workers but for other sectors and professionals.
The White House also signaled that Biden was not willing to budge on another López Obrador request — to send U.S.-manufactured coronavirus vaccines to his country.
Psaki said Biden would not agree to the move, saying the president was first focused on getting Americans vaccinated.
A similar posture toward Canada has also proved to be a wrinkle in that relationship.
The Biden official said the meeting would help Biden begin to institutionalize the relationship with Mexico, rather than let it be determined by tweets — a preferred form of diplomacy by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
The United States shares a trade agreement — most recently updated in 2018 and 2019 — with Mexico and Canada, which are its second- and thirdbiggest trade partners after China. The trade agreement could complicate López Obrador’s efforts possibly to defund and eliminate independent regulatory, watchdog and transparency agencies in Mexico.
There are also questions of whether López Obrador will warm to Biden’s efforts to address climate change and move to cleaner energy sources. The Mexican president supports a measure to make that country’s national grids prioritize power from government plants, many of which burn coal or fuel oil.
At Monday’s news conference, López Obrador confirmed they would discuss climate change, but he said “Biden is respectful of our sovereignty” because “he doesn’t see Mexico as America’s backyard.”
The Trump era was defined by the threat of tariffs, crackdowns on migration and his desire to construct a wall on the U.S. southern border, yet Trump appeared to enjoy an amicable relationship with his Mexican counterpart.
Mexico paid nothing for Trump’s cherished border wall, despite the U.S. leader’s repeated claims that it would. But López Obrador’s government did send troops to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala to deal with an unprecedented wave of asylum-seekers bound for the U.S. Mexico hosted about 70,000 people seeking U.S. asylum while they waited for dates in immigration courts, a policy known as Remain in Mexico and officially as Migrant Protection Protocols.
The Biden administration immediately began to unwind Remain in Mexico, suspending it for new arrivals on the president’s first day in office and soon after announcing that an estimated 26,000 people with still-active cases could be released in the United States while their cases played out.
PARIS – A Paris court found former French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling Monday and sentenced him to a year in prison. He can ask to serve that time at home and also plans to appeal.
The 66-year-old, who was president from 2007 to 2012, was convicted of trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated.
He will remain free while he appeals, but it was a blow to the retired politician who still plays an influential role in French conservative politics. He faces another trial this month and is under investigation in a third case.
The ruling marks the first time in France’s modern history that a former president has been convicted of corruption and given a prison term. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was found guilty in 2011 of misuse of public money during his time as Paris mayor and was given a two-year suspended prison sentence.
The court said Sarkozy could be detained at home with an electronic bracelet – the case for sentences of two years or less. He also received a conditional two-year suspended sentence.
Sarkozy’s co-defendants – his lawyer and longtime friend Thierry Herzog, 65, and now-retired magistrate Gilbert Azibert, 74 – were also found guilty and given the same sentence as the politician.