October 19, 2022—The United States and Mexico have at least three things in common: drugs, guns and migrants.
The U.S.-Mexico border is porous, and trafficking of all three runs rampant. In the United States, deadly drugs from the South kill Americans. Conversely, in Mexico, illegal firearms from the North empower cartels and endanger society.
Meanwhile, migrants from around the world risk their lives to make it across the border.
A Shared Border, Shared Problems
Leaders in both governments recognize the problems. Their presidents are making plans to address them.
Speaking by phone late Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador reviewed plans to improve security along the border, prosecute gun traffickers, reduce illegal migration, and combat trafficking of fentanyl.
AMLO Bets On Social Welfare
In Mexico, Obrador says the government is making progress against violent crime, in part by deploying the National Guard. But AMLO, as Obrador is known, is also betting that social welfare policies will turn things around. He wants to double the minimum wage, develop an apprentice program, and provide scholarship programs for education.
“This is most important thing to address the causes,” Obrador said at a conference today in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. “It takes time. We would like to see more progress.”
AMLO’s security chiefs joined him at the conference. Their gave an update about their attempt to restore security and the rule of law in Tamaulipas. The area is so dangerous due to organized crime, the U.S. State Department urges its citizens to avoid traveling there as well as five other Mexican states. Moreover, the department advises Americans to “reconsider travel” to seven other states in Mexico due to crime and kidnapping.
New Gun Trafficking U.S. Law
Meanwhile, in the United States, leaders promise to curb the flow of illegal firearm trafficking. It’s a priority for Mexico. The government there says traffickers send thousands of pistols, rifles, assault weapons and ammunition across the border. The government’s attorneys, who have sued U.S. gun manufacturers in U.S. courts, argue that makers and dealers willfully “aid and abet the killing and maiming of children, judges, journalists, police, and ordinary citizens throughout Mexico.”
In June, Congress passed and Biden signed into law a bill that gives U.S. prosecutors greater tools to go after people selling firearms to criminals.
Originally introduced as the Stop Illegal Trafficking in Firearms Act by Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Bobby Rush, Congress wrapped the legislation into a larger bill that became law on June 25.
Already, law enforcement agencies have been putting the new tools to work. In September, the Justice Department announced the first conviction under the new law. Isaac Hernandez, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen living in Mexico, pled guilty to trafficking handguns into Mexico. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Taming Illegal Immigration With New Legal Avenues
Biden and Obrador also discussed migration.
Migrants come to the United States from Central America, South America, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, and other countries. Of the 2.5 million illegal migrants the U.S. Customs and Border Control documented this year, over 2 million crossed against the law at the Southwest Land Border.
Today, Biden promised Obrador to expand legal pathways as an alternative to irregular migration, according to a White House statement. The U.S. departments of Homeland Security and Labor have already started opening up more legal ways to enter the United States. Last week, the agencies expanded the H-2B visas for temporary, non-farm workers from 66,000 by another 64,716.
“At a time of record job growth, this full year allocation at the very outset of the fiscal year will ensure that businesses can plan for their peak season labor needs,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. We also will bolster worker protections to safeguard the integrity of the program from unscrupulous employers who would seek to exploit the workers by paying substandard wages and maintaining unsafe work conditions.”
–Press Release on Oct. 12, 2022
Opening up legal pathways for immigration and giving the U.S. Justice Department tools to target trafficking are steps in the right direction.
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