Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday thanked President Joe Biden for being the first president in a long time that has not built “even one meter of the infamous border wall” along the U.S.-Mexican border.
His comments came at the end of a two-day North American Leaders Summit that was preceded by an agreement from Mexico to accept the return of migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba who enter the U.S. illegally. In exchange, the United States agreed to create a new legal pathway for up to 30,000 people each month from those countries who have a sponsor and pass background checks.
But those and other changes announced by Biden before the summit were criticized by both immigration opponents as too lax and by immigration supporters as too similar to former President Donald Trump’s hardline approach.
“Both extremes are wrong,” Biden said at the joint news conference held with López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
He added: “It’s a basic middle proposition.”
In addition to migration, other issues the leaders discussed over two days included making North America a “clean energy powerhouse” and strengthening supply chains for critical minerals, electric vehicles and semiconductors.
Source: OEM