The NPR Politics Podcast - Border, Drugs, Economy On Agenda As North American Leaders Meet

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

President Biden heads to Mexico City this week for two days of meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Biden's trip comes after he made his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as president, and the three are set to talk about issues affecting all of their countries, including immigration. This episode: White House correspondents Asma Khalid and Tamara Keith, and Mexico City correspondent Eyder Peralta.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Lexie Schapitl. It was edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com Hello, this is David in Belfast, Northern Ireland. If you can hear some background noise, that's because I've walked out to the main road near my house. And if I look to the east, I can see Parliament Building sitting on a hill about a mile away. It's home to the Northern Ireland Assembly, which is a bit like a state legislature.

Or, more accurately, it should be home to the Assembly. But the Assembly hasn't been able to sit for several months because they haven't been able to elect a Speaker. I don't know if you can think of anything similar ever happening in the United States. This podcast was recorded at 1.09 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, January 9th of 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. That was quite the reveal. Well, hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Tamer Keith. I also cover the White House. And today on the show, we are joined by our colleague, Eder Peralta. He covers Mexico and Latin America for NPR. And Eder, it is so, so good to have you with us. I'm so happy to be here. I'm a longtime listener, first time caller. No way. We're not first time on the pod. It is absolutely 100% first time. Oh, wow.

I did not know that. Well, welcome, welcome. So, Eder, you and TM are both in Mexico City right now, both covering the North American Leaders Summit. That's a meeting I should explain between President Biden, Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. And it comes after Biden visited the U.S.-Mexico border over the weekend. It was his first trip to the southern border since he entered the White House. And Tam, this trip, you know, came two years into Biden's presidency. And it was at a moment when,

you know, I think it is worth pointing out, we have seen record numbers of migrants trying to enter the United States. So tell us, what did the president see? What did he do when he went to the border? I would also argue he was probably trying to get out ahead of Republican oversight in the House, where they are no doubt planning to hold hearings about immigration policy and to take the Biden administration to task. So the first thing that happened basically when he got off the plane in Texas was that Governor Greg Abbott of Texas handed him a letter that accused him and his administration of being responsible for the, quote, chaos at the border for not enforcing existing immigration laws. Abbott says that Biden told him that he would work on it with him together. They were going to work together on this. What Biden saw was he did see a section of border fence. He saw dogs and other tools that are used to try to detect narcotics being smuggled into the country, in particular, the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl. And he also met with people who were trying to help the migrants as they come,

NGOs and religious organizations. He asked at one point, if I had a magic wand and could give you anything to help, what would it be? And they said, money. Which is something he has asked Congress for, but has said that he has not yet received the amount of funding he's been asking for to deal with the situation at the border. Exactly. So I'm curious, Ader, how the migration story looks from the Mexico side of the border. You know, as Tam is describing, the president was in El Paso, Texas. He saw things from that vantage point. How does it look from Mexico? I think chaos, that same word, right? I mean, I will tell you when the Biden administration

announced that they would begin to expel Venezuelans immediately as soon as they crossed the Mexico border. We saw that chaos even here in Mexico City, where we are really far from the border, right? I mean, I can tell you that I went out into the streets, and there were Venezuelans lining up at Mexico's migration center because they didn't know what to do, right? On the southern border, it has been militarized here. We've seen, you know, protests from migrants who want to be allowed to continue their path north and the northern border, which means the border with the United States. There are just thousands of migrants who are camped out along the border,

waiting for what was supposed to be for what they thought would be a change in immigration policy after elections, right? And now, you know, the Biden administration has announced that they are actually extending some of these policies that were put in place for Venezuelans, for Nicaraguans, Cubans, and Haitians, right? So I think we're going to see a lot more people here who don't know what to do. And that has just caused a ton of confusion here in Mexico. So briefly, the immigration policy that President Biden announced last week that Ader is alluding to here, it's sort of a carrot and stick approach. On the carrot side,

the Biden administration is going to allow 30,000 people from those countries to enter the U.S. temporarily and legally to live and work in the United States if they can find a sponsor in the U.S. and pass a background check, and then they would arrive on commercial aircraft. They'd just come into the country that way. On the other side of it, people who don't go through that legal pathway that they're opening up to a broader section of people, the Biden administration is going to immediately expel them, many of them to Mexico. Mexico announced that they would accept 30,000 people a month. So I want to ask a follow up here, Ader. I mean, this program was put in place with Mexico's knowledge and cooperation, this 30,000

migrant number that Tam is saying there. I mean, what is the Mexican government's response been? Why did they agree to this level of cooperation? So look, this program wouldn't work without Mexican cooperation, right? And today, the president and his foreign minister gave a full-throated support of this program. And they say that this is the humane way to control immigration, to get immigrants out of the hands of smugglers, right? And what the president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said is President Biden has our full support. And that is a direct quote. And his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that what's amazing about this is that President Biden is proposing to allow 360,000 immigrants under humanitarian paroles, which he called unprecedented.

He says that what is remarkable about this is that he is doing so when the right has just taken Congress. And so they are offering his full support. So, Adar, why is Mexico being so generous in its wording here? First of all, they're getting tens of thousands of temporary visas for their workers. And like, you know, many countries in the global south, remittances, the money that paisanos, as they call them here, Mexicans in the United States, send back to Mexico is significant. But some analysts that I've spoken to here say that they're also getting silence. And this is a government, this Mexican government, who has been accused of militarizing the country, of doing anti-democratic things, including a reform of the Electoral Commission that critics here say can really hurt Mexican democracy. And we're not

hearing much criticism from the United States on many of those things. So analysts I've spoken to here say that that's what Mexico is getting. All right, well, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. And we're back. And I want to talk now about another key issue on the agenda,

and that is the economy, trying to integrate the region more economically. And, you know, Tam, as wonky as it may sound, I think we need to explain why supply chains are such a focus here. The answer is China. As a result of the pandemic, everyone in the world really saw that reliance on Chinese manufacturing could cripple global supply chains. And so there is a renewed effort here to do what's called nearshoring or to bring some of this manufacturing, things like chips or like microchips to North America, whether that be in Mexico or Canada or the United States, but to create a more interconnected continent. And obviously, North America is already pretty interconnected through trade relationships and through what was the North America Free Trade Agreement, now the USMCA. And certainly there are disagreements along the way

and challenges, but I think that the people I talk to say that there is this strong recognition that everyone would be better off if they could nearshore some of this manufacturing. So it sounds like the relationship between the United States and China is certainly giving the focus on economic integration this really strong impetus. I am curious to see what kind of deliverables we actually see, you know, in terms of making the region more economically integrated after this meeting. I want to shift gears, though, and ask you both about an issue that I anticipate we will hear as part of the discussions, and that's the situation in Haiti. What is the latest there? What do you expect we'll hear discussed? So we've been told that it will be part of the discussions between Canada and the United States. But I think what's important here is that Haiti is like, it's a serious crisis. I was there last year and, you know, I'm coming off of years of reporting in Africa.

And I don't know that hunger at an IPC4 level means much to the Western Hemisphere. Yeah, what does that mean? It means that they are one step from famine, which means that there is a population in Haiti that is one step from dying of hunger. I mean, Haiti is basically a failed state. When I was there last year, gangs had taken over the capital. They were blocking fuel depots. They were not allowing anything in and out of the country. And so the government had essentially lost control of its capital. The de facto prime minister many months ago asked for help from the international community. He said that there needed to be an international intervention in Haiti.

And for the most part, nothing has been done from the international community. We should also take Haiti in the context of a hemisphere that is facing a lot of crisis. In the past year or so, four different countries have suspended constitutional rights in some way or another to deal with gang violence, right? And I think this feels right now like the superpowers on this continent, the three countries that are talking right now, have not been able to find a way forward in a lot of these crises, right? They haven't been able to find a way forward in Haiti, or in Venezuela, or in Nicaragua, or, you know, in many of these countries that are facing huge political problems. I think it is fair to say, though, that Latin America has not been the primary focus from the Biden administration.

I mean, they have been far more focused on China, Russia and the war in Ukraine. So I would ask a follow up here, whether there is a sense that this summit is the start of more to come, or is it sort of a just a one off and won't really mean much in terms of the United States focus in the region? In terms of this trilateral relationship, President Biden has spent a lot of time with Prime Minister Trudeau because he's part of the G7. They've been in all of these meetings, these emergency meetings and other meetings that have happened over the past year about the conflict in Ukraine and countering Russia. That's not a conversation that Mexico or Mexico's president has been a part of.

Another small thing that has happened at the beginning of this trip is that President Biden flew into an airport that is favored by the Mexican president. The Mexican president asked him to fly into it. It is wildly inconvenient. But what it meant is that these two leaders who haven't actually spent very much time together had a 70 minute car ride in the president's limousine to have a personal conversation and to connect, which I think is something that the Mexican president was eager to have happen. You know, this is the second time that President Biden is coming to one of these meetings, right? And these summits did not happen at all during the Trump administration. But they resumed with the Biden administration.

They also happened during the Trump administration. But they resumed with the Biden administration. They also happened during the Obama administration. So one expert I talked to said, like, just the mere fact that these summits are now happening on the regular is an indication of an effort to, you know, really focus on this North American relationship. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. Eder, it has been such a pleasure having you on the podcast with us today. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I'm Asma Khalid, I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith, I also cover the White House. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.