The outcome of the first formal meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), held virtually this afternoon was still unknown, as of 5:30 p.m., but both governments had put ideas for policy on immigration, energy policy and climate change on the agenda in advance. On immigration: AMLO announced two days ago that he would propose to Biden that their governments reach an agreement to legalize migration for Mexican and Central American workers whose labor is needed in the U.S. economy, in a way which benefits both nations.
His proposal harks back to the way migrant labor between the countries was handled under the “bracero,” or guest-worker, program which functioned during World War II and several decades afterwards. “Let’s look at this: You are going to need Mexican and Central American workers to grow, to produce…. Without Mexican labor power, how can an increase in production in the United States be guaranteed? That’s why we are proposing an agreement,” López Obrador said, estimating that the U.S. needs around 600-800,000 such workers a year. So, he suggested, “let us order the migratory flow better, legalizing it, providing guarantees for the workers, so that they do not risk their lives, and their human rights are protected.”
For decades, American statesman Lyndon LaRouche insisted that just such a government-to-government agreement is required and will work—provided that it is premised “on establishing economic accords with Mexico around the idea of trading oil for technology, measures which will guarantee economic boom conditions on both sides of the border.” That policy was elaborated in an April 13, 1981 statement issued by LaRouche’s National Democratic Policy Committee titled bluntly: “No Migrant Law Will Work without a Growth Approach.” [https://larouchepub.com/lar/2006/3315policy_immig_1981.html]
In a discussion in 2006 with U.S. constituency leaders, LaRouche again called for migration to be “regularize[d]” by negotiating migration status, “government to government, through the appropriate institutions,” in the context of an international program to develop both sides of the border. Developing Mexico’s national oil industry is key to such development, LaRouche insisted again, but with the understanding that it be done as a means to develop the nuclear industry needed in Mexico to efficiently overcome shortages of power and water. [https://larouchepub.com/lar/2006/3320immigr_dialogue.html ]
Last Friday, Feb. 26, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signaled in his preparatory talks with Mexico’s Foreign and Economic Ministers, that the Biden administration instead intends to pressure AMLO’s government to capitulate to the predatory demands of Wall Street’s climate mafia and private energy multinationals, and give up its fight to reestablish energy sovereignty—something President Donald Trump had refused to do. Acting Assistant Secretary of State Julie Chung told reporters that Blinken would raise “private sector concerns'’ about AMLO’s proposed Electricity Law, which would rebuild Mexico’s sovereign energy capacity and limit “renewables'’ profiteering. The threat to cut foreign investment in Mexico unless it capitulates was clear in Chung’s statement: “We encourage Mexico to listen to the stakeholders, to listen to the private sector companies and really provide that culture, the atmosphere of free investment and transparency so that companies will continue to invest in Mexico.”
