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President Joe Biden is expected to discuss migration, the COVID-19 pandemic and economic cooperation with Mexico in his Monday meeting with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the White House says.
The meeting, scheduled for late Monday, is taking place virtually due to the pandemic. It’s Biden’s second such meeting with a foreign leader in less than a week, after the new president met virtually with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Feb. 23.
López Obrador has reportedly said he intends to propose to Biden a new immigrant labor program. The program, reports the Associated Press, could bring as many as 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants a year to work legally in the U.S. The AP said a senior Biden administration official declined to say whether the U.S. president would support or oppose the proposal.
A White House statement about the meeting said the leaders “will discuss cooperation on migration, joint developments in Southern Mexico and Central America, COVID-19 recovery, and economic cooperation.”
López Obrador is also expected to ask Biden to consider sharing part of the U.S. coronavirus vaccine supply during the summit. When asked on Monday ahead of the meeting if that’s something Biden is in fact considering, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it wasn’t.
“No,” she said. “The president has made clear that he is focused on ensuring that vaccines are accessible to every American.”
Coronavirus tally: Global cases of COVID-19 top 114 million and U.S. death toll above 513,000
The two leaders may also discuss cross-border trade, as the U.S., Mexico and Canada share a trade agreement. Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, signed a major rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement in January 2020.
The Biden-López Obrador meeting is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Eastern.
Before the meeting, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas blasted the Trump administration’s approach to immigration during a briefing for reporters at the White House.
“The prior administration dismantled our nation’s immigration system in its entirety,” Mayorkas said. He added that it takes time to “build out of the depths of cruelty that the administration before us established.”
In response to one reporter’s question about a recent increase in migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Mayorkas said the current situation is not a crisis but rather “a challenge at the border that we are managing.” He also said a task force for reuniting migrant families separated by the Trump administration will give those families the option of staying in the U.S.
“We are hoping to reunite the families, either here or in the country of origin,” he said. “We hope to be in a position to give them the election, and if in fact they seek to reunite here in the United States, we will explore lawful pathways for them to remain in the United States, and to address the family needs so we are acting as restoratively as possible.”
U.S. stock indexes DJIA, +2.18% SPX, +2.43% COMP, +2.61% were rising Monday to kick off trade in March, with some strategists attributing the enthusiasm to a cool-down in the rapid rise in bond yields that had unsettled the bullish mood on Wall Street last week.
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