At the very beginning of their relationship, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. President Joe Biden were not amigos. Over the fence, no wall separating the two nations—a friendly neighbor policy was far from simpatico. But at the end of a two-day summit that ended on Tuesday, the leaders, along with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, were on much more cordial terms, although some critical issues remained to be resolved.
It took Obrador a long time to formally accept that Biden had won the election. He was one of the last world leaders to end a position that placed him among a list of deniers.
One ongoing and quite prevalent concern was on immigration problems between the U.S. and Mexico, with Biden pushing for a diplomatic answer to what many have defined as the “greatest migration in human history.”
Biden thanked Lopez Obrador for “agreeing to take up to 3,000 people back,” in an apparent promise made last week to begin accepting 30,000 migrants each month. Most of these illegal migrants were coming from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The president’s position was in stark contrast to human rights groups that believed the border policy denying these migrants’ asylum rights was inhumane. Biden responded, “There can no longer be any question, none, in today’s interconnected world. We cannot wall ourselves off from shared problems. We’re trying to make it easier for people to get here.”
Such a stand clearly addressed the policies of the former White House occupant.
In many respects, the summit enhanced the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the agreement that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the summer of 2020, but some contentious problems still must be ironed out, particularly between Mexico and Canada on energy matters.
The three countries made positive steps on drug trafficking, climate change, trade and economic prosperity.
“When we work together, we can achieve great things,” Biden told Trudeau, emphasizing the economic potential that comes with collaboration between close neighbors. He added: “I’m lucky. I got Canada to the north and Mexico to the south.”
This, according to one expert, is much better than being between a rock and a hard place.