Washington and New York, January 19.- The meeting between U.S. and Mexican cabinet secretaries today to negotiate measures to control the flow of migration at the U.S. border offers further evidence that the Joe Biden administration needs Mexico's collaboration both to address the migration issue and to obtain a negotiated agreement with the U.S. Congress to fund more weapons and other agreements for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Senior U.S. officials, in a briefing with reporters this Thursday, reiterated that Friday's bilateral meeting is intended to fine-tune the two countries' "shared interests" in reducing the flow of undocumented migration. But everything indicates that at this juncture, the United States needs Mexico on migration issues much more than Mexico needs the United States.
"If Washington reaches an agreement on the border, its success or failure may ultimately depend on the reaction in Mexico , " the political outlet Semafor said this week.
Polls show that a majority of Americans lack confidence in Biden's ability to handle the immigration issue—including many Democrats—and the issue is a central focus of the electoral debate and key to the Republican offensive against Biden. At the same time, Republicans have conditioned the approval of a $106 billion aid package proposed by Biden for Ukraine and Israel on new anti-immigrant measures, including closures of parts of the border, further restrictions on asylum applications, and increased mass deportations, in response to what they call the Democrats' failure to control the flow of migrants.
