López Obrador’s double game: Improving conditions for migrants in the US while winning over voters

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is taking his demands for migrants to the U.S. presidential campaign. Immigration is a key issue for both countries, which share a miles-long and high-tension border. Last Thursday, López Obrador said that if any of the White House presidential candidates committed in writing to regularizing the 5.3 million Mexicans who work in the United States without papers, he would make a point of ensuring that Mexican migrants in the U.S. were aware of this fact. And this is no small number: around 40 million Mexicans (12.3 million born in Mexico and the rest descendants) live in the U.S., and both Joe Biden and Donald Trump — the likely contenders in the November presidential elections — are competing for their votes.

President López Obrador is taking advantage of the influential Mexican vote in the U.S. not only to demand the regularization of migrant workers, but also to win over support for his party, Morena, ahead of Mexico’s own presidential election on June 2. Last week, the president said that if undocumented Mexicans, who have been working in the country for years, were regularized, he would announce the news not only in one of his morning press conferences, but in many. In other words, he would relay the message nearly every day.

Last Sunday, López Obrador — who is little if at all prone to giving interviews — spoke to journalist Sharyn Alfonsi on the CBS program 60 Minutes, one of the most watched news programs in the United States. In the interview, he said he was addressing the Mexican community in the country. Not content with what was broadcast on the show, the president decided to release the recording of the entire interview. López Obrador wanted to make his efforts to regularize Mexican workers known, as this was not included in what was broadcast on the show.

“The interview was extensive, but only 17 minutes were broadcast,” he explained at his morning press conference on Tuesday. “I’m not talking about censorship, we greatly respect what they did [on television], they are in charge of their time and strategies, but we need people and especially migrants to be informed. It is very important to us that migrants see this, because I talked about our demand, that their status be regularized, now that the candidates are offering many things in the United States. This is also how we make it known to the people of Mexico.”

The president said that Alfonsi had also asked him about his demand that the United States allocate $20 billion each year to help the main origin countries of migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean, “something that has not been done since the Alliance for Progress in the time of President Kennedy.” He explained: “[Sharyn Alfonsi] told me that politicians in the United States think it’s a lot, and I answered, ‘Don’t they think that what they allocate to war is a lot?’ What we are asking for is a much smaller amount.”

López Obrador’s idea for Americans to be aware of “the point of view” of the Mexican administration will likely become a recurring theme of his press conferences. The president seems determined to bring to light all aspects of his immigration policy that did not make the final cut of the 60 Minutes interview. And immigration was not the only issue that was discussed. The president also spoke about weapons, arguing it was “important that there be a reflection on this” topic. “Seventy-five percent of the smuggled weapons that enter Mexico are of American origin and half are from Texas, where the governor puts barbed wire fences over the river,” he said. In this way, little by little, López Obrador is putting his demands to the U.S. in the public discourse.

This is not the first time that the Mexican president has complained about the U.S. perception of Mexican migrants as drug addicts or criminals. “They are honest workers,” he has said on more than one occasion. And he has put numbers to his claims, highlighting how Mexican workers contribute to the U.S. economy as they pay taxes even if they are undocumented. According to data from Chancellor Alicia Bárcena, Mexican workers annually contribute $340 billion to the U.S. economy, once the remittances they send to their families in Mexico are discounted.

For years, Democrats and Republicans have been trying to win over the Latino vote, as millions of Latinos are eligible to vote in the United States. Republican leader Donald Trump, for example, uses xenophobic rhetoric against migrants — claiming “they’re poisoning the blood of our country” — yet, he still tries to sway over Latino voters in key areas.

The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has also launched numerous attacks against migrants who try to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. He has set up barbed wire to block their passage and passed the country’s toughest anti-migrant law, which considers irregular crossings a crime.

These attacks are not forgotten by López Obrador. “Economic integration is a reality. If they close the borders, citizens will pay more for what they consume,” he said on Tuesday. “In the interview [with 60 Minutes], I gave the example of a vehicle, which on average would be between $10,000 and $15,000 more expensive. When they talk about closing the borders, they are not being rational, it is just a show of propaganda.”

The Mexican president’s morning press conferences have become increasingly limited due to campaign rules against election interference, but that has not stopped him from setting his sights on the United States, where he has found a way to get his message across: both to Mexicans in and outside of the country. If one of the White House candidates supports regularizing undocumented Mexican workers, they would have López Obrador as an ally in the effort to win over the migrant vote at the U.S. presidential election.

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