Mexico’s president said Friday that he is willing to help out with a surge of migrants that led to the closure of border crossings with the United States, but he wants the U.S. government to open talks with Cuba and send more development aid to migrants’ home countries.
The comments by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador came a day after the U.S. announced that a delegation of top U.S. officials would visit Mexico for talks on how to enforce immigration rules at the two countries’ shared border.
Also Friday, U.S. authorities reopened two cross-border railroad crossings in Texas, while keeping operations limited or suspended at other border crossings. And figures released Friday show arrests for crossing the U.S. border from Mexico nudged 1.2% higher in November from October, one of the latest signs of what Troy Miller, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, described this week as “unprecedented” migration flows.
My dad has been saying for decades how ridiculous it is we have neglected this entire hemisphere, causing damage and then complaining when the countries we’ve directly impacted have people who want a better life.
Imagine the position we’d be in if we moved all of our low cost manufacturing labor to central and South America instead of China. There’s no reason we can’t be helping our direct neighbors.
That’s a great, and very agreeable point, Waluigi’s Talking Buttplug!
Not neglecting, more like actively sabotaging. Since the 1800s the US has been actively interfering in the politics of every country from Mexico southward. Fomenting coups against popular governments and giving full support to brutal and genocidal dictators all to protect US business interests.
Leaving aside all of the maquiladoras that have sprung up across the border since the passage of NAFTA, sure, your old man has a point.
What really happened is that we did move our low-cost manufacturing to Latin America, but our capitalist rent-seeking overlords figured out that playing ball with the CCP was even more lucrative and so they willingly allowed low-cost Asian manufacturing to take over.
That said, it’s still true that the US does more trade with Mexico than we do with China.
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It’s criminal that Cuba has been crushed with sanctions for decades all because the US doesn’t like their government. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot how people would react
It’s mostly because of Cubans in Florida. If Florida wasn’t a swing state, no one would give a shit.
It used to be, but I doubt I’d even call it a swing state anymore. Democratics need to stop caring what they think. Florida Cubans are like the most conservative people on the planet. Like, leading the Proud Boys level conservative. They’re never voting for a Democrat.
You can’t even claim it’s because the U.S. doesn’t deal with communist governments, since the U.S. does not have remotely similar sanctions against China or Vietnam. People can travel to Vietnam or China whenever they want to. No special dispensations needed on the U.S. side.
Meanwhile, Canadians are catching rays at fancy Cuban resorts. I know. My uncle was one of them.
Yeah the US is just butt hurt that they were so humiliated by such a small nation and now they won’t let it go.
We were humiliated by Vietnam as well. We let that go. Cuba is different because a minority of Cubans who fled to the U.S. when Castro came to power wield a large amount of influence in Florida politics, and thus national politics.
That’s fair, it hurts when your slaves are taken away lol.
It’s crazy that a single state has that much international sway though.
Agreed. Thankfully, those people are dying out along with a lot of Florida’s aging population, so this will hopefully not last.
Have to remember that some American states are more like countries when you compare physical size, population, gdp, resources, etc. The United States is a collection of nation-states in one union with federal oversight, kinda like a workers union.
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There many businesses making large profits by keeping the embargo in place.
I really don’t understand why Cuba is still on some dumb blacklist when the Cold War has been over for decades. I mean… WTF?!?
Cuban immigrants in Florida tend to hate the Cuban government. Opening up relations would mean losing all of their votes, and nobody wants to risk that.
Oh, no, democrats wouldn’t have a chance of winning in Florida? That is almost as bad as hurting our chances of winning Mississippi!
Pretty sure the Cuban population tends to vote republican because of the press about democrats being socialist wannabes or whatever.
Didn’t Obama loosen restrictions on Cuba and the Trump put it back to how it was before?
They don’t vote Democrat regardless because of Kennedy
Except the endgame is to change the government for the better. Perhaps they are wedded to the idea of a permanent bad government in Cuba, which forms their personality.
It’s so fucking stupid man. Like, even assuming you hate communism, would the best way to beat communism not be to heavily trade with it and just McDonalds the communism away? Like if capitalism is superior it will just spread around and win.
Makes no sense to me.
countless american operatives bave died failing their missions in chuba. All TOP SECRET of corse /s
Because Obama moved to normalize relations a little bit so Trump had to set it back further.
He’s such a lovely man isn’t he?
Good. This could be mutually beneficial for the Biden administration and Cuba.
It would hand the Floridian vote to Republicans though. Yes stopping the embargo is right, but the Cubans in Florida will never support it
Man, as I outlined in another comment, Republicans already own Florida, and it’s only getting worse. Florida is lost for a decade or more. If there was ever a time when we don’t need to worry about pissing off Floridan voting blocs, it’s now.
I agree Florida is probably a lost cause, but making a policy decision based on that alone isn’t how you win the game American politicians are forced to play.
“What would turn red?”, is one question that must be asked, and assuming Florida is a lost cause, the answer may well be “nothing”. But an equally important question is, “What would turn blue?”, and unfortunately, I would guess the answer is also “nothing”. Conservative Texans would be stoked to get help from Mexico at the border, but they’re not gonna vote for Biden over it. It also wouldn’t surprise me if being “soft on Cuba” is still a losing position among several Dem bases, especially older neoliberals.
Relief from immigration pressure would reduce the validity of complaints about the ‘migrant crush’, which might improve numbers amongst ‘swing voters’, and the end of the dispute with Cuba would be positive for the Biden administration’s foreign policy efforts, considering that our position on Cuba is still deeply unpopular internationally.
Seems pretty fair.
Not really, it’s past time we lifted sanctions.
Honestly? I’m pretty sure it’s the sugar lobby that is the reason for it. Lots of sugar industry types would have to compete again, and we can’t have that.
We can’t negotiate with Cuba for another 10 or 20 years, we have to wait for more old Cubans to die in Miami first.
What does it matter at this point? Florida is so Republican that it’s chasing down imaginary LGBT folk in every schoolhouse. They’re lost to the Democratic Party - so why should the threat of their votes frighten us away from doing the right thing anymore?
I understand you aren’t defending them, just stating the fact of their obstinacy, I just felt obligated to mention that the strategic outlook in Florida has changed this past decade.
I vote we wall off Florida and nickname the wall “Americans cock ring”
I also make this my vote.
Instead of Cuba, we should put isolative sanctions on Florida.
(I will accept calling them a “cock ring”.)
No no. Florida is America’s dick the wall is the cockring.
(And… not just because of the geographic er, similarities,)
Didn’t stop Obama from opening relations, it’s Trump that fucked things up
Not only fucked it up, it made almost impossible to revert the decision as it is now required that house And senate agree to do it, when in the past is was just a matter of a presidential signature.
I live in FL and the dissociation from Cuban expats towards the world, and the people who still live in the island and their reality are astounding. Some laugh and think of themselves as whites ; like the proud boy Tarrio.They’re only whites as long as there are darker people around, that’s what they should remember.
You mean try to address the source of the problems which lead desperate people to come to the US in the first place instead of malign brown people once they’re already here? How dreadfully reasonable. Republicans would hate it. “You’re not hurting the right people!”
Talks with the Cuban regimen/dictatorship? Maybe ask Mexico’s president what he thinks of the thousands of Cubans that flee the island every year and the cruelty that the regimen show to their own citizens. Of course he will have no comments since they’re on the same team.
Internet trolls can downvote all you want, this is not reddit you don’t have the same leverage here.
