USA, Mexico and Canada: A summit of gestures

After initial discord, US President Biden and Mexican President López Obrador demonstrated unity at the North America summit. But the differences on the issue of migration remain.

Mexico is considered a very hospitable country, and Joe Biden and his wife Jill were also warmly welcomed. Among others by a traditional mariachi band. With big sombreros on their heads and bulbous guitars in their hands, some musicians played a little serenade.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was also particularly cordial when he received the US President and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the start of the North America Summit. It had already crunched in the bilateral talks between Biden and him: “It is time to put an end to the forgetting, neglect and contempt for Latin America and the Caribbean,” says the left-wing politician.

Biden and Trudeau want closer partnership

López Obrador has repeatedly called for more financial support from the United States in the past. The goal: to alleviate poverty in the region and to distribute wealth more fairly. This is to combat the causes of flight. Biden countered that the United States had spent “tens of billions of dollars” on the region in the past 15 years alone.

However, both Canada and the USA want closer economic and political cooperation: “We are and will always be stronger together,” said Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau. Biden defended his migration policy. Compared to his predecessor Trump, he had relaxed many regulations. In the US, this causes criticism.

Deal between the US and Mexico

Even before the North America summit, Biden had announced that under certain conditions he would issue temporary work visas to curb illegal immigration – 30,000 visas per month to people from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Mexico, in turn, takes in the same number of people per month that the US deports, that’s the deal.

Biden and López Obrador need each other – despite some differences. Both are under domestic political pressure: more refugees are coming to the US-Mexico border than they have been for a long time. More than two million people were arrested and deported in the US fiscal year 2022. At the end of the North America summit, the Mexican president once again spoke kind words to Biden: “It’s the first time in a long time that an American president hasn’t built a single meter of wall on the border,” said the Mexican President. “And we thank you for that.”

Great symbolic importance

The meeting of the three leaders was primarily symbolic. They repeatedly emphasized their willingness to tackle problems in the region together. In addition to the topic of migration, the heads of state and their delegations from the USA, Mexico and Canada also had climate protection and the joint free trade agreement on their agenda.