Mexican president asks Biden for more U.S. visas for temporary migrants

Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador asked his American counterpart Joe Biden to extend temporary work permits for migrants from Mexico and Central America during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday.

At the start of the meeting in the Oval Office, Obrador requested “regulation of the migration flow and permission to enter the United States for workers, technicians and specialists of various specialties, Mexicans and Central Americans holding temporary work visas (entry permits)”.

During an unusually long speech for such meetings, the President of Mexico recalled that in the 1930s, then US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–1945) created a program that allowed thousands of Mexican farmers to be hired.

“Something similar to this program is what we are offering now,” Lopez Obrador said.

However, he told Biden that it was “extremely important (…) to resolve now” the Mexican migrants who have been in the US for years and who are “contributing to the development of this great nation.”

He also believes that the migration crisis the region is experiencing cannot be overcome without a “bold welfare program”.

Biden stressed that the two states “together will solve the problems of migration,” and recalled that, like the United States, Mexico “has become a major destination” for migrants.

“My administration is leading the way in creating legal employment opportunities,” said Biden, who said the White House set a “record” in 2021 by issuing 300,000 H2 temporary work permits for Mexicans used for illegal purposes. employment in agriculture.

It was the second face-to-face meeting between the two presidents since the meeting in Washington in 2021, which also included Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

An earlier meeting was scheduled for last June on the occasion of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, but Obrador canceled his participation in protest of the US decision to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.