THE US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, MIGRATION AND ITS IMPACT ON MEXICO

The presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump held on Thursday, June 27, 2024, organized by CNN, raised for Mexico, several important issues in the bilateral relationship.

First, it was very clear that for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, illegal migration to the United States is the central theme of his campaign, because as he reiterated throughout the debate, the entry of “millions” of illegal migrants causes the main problems of the United States: crimes against American citizens; increased spending on social security, education and health care for illegal immigrants; loss of jobs for the black and Hispanic population, as migrants take away their sources of work; national security risks from the entry of “thousands” of terrorists; increased opioid overdose epidemic, from the entry of fentanyl through the southern border; and the loss of the country’s sovereignty, by not having control over its borders.

Second, President Biden did not have a forceful response to Trump’s lies, exaggerations and biased information on the immigration issue, merely insisting that the bipartisan proposal to reform the U. S. immigration system was boycotted by Trump, who decided to use this issue as the centerpiece of his election campaign.

Third, in view of the clear decline in President Biden’s mental faculties that could be felt during the debate, and the expressions of many members of the Democratic Party about the need to change the presidential candidate, given the mental and physical limitations of the current president, it is almost certain that the anti-immigrant narrative of Trump will gain even more attention and acceptance among the population of the United States, since on the Democratic side they will be more concerned with resolving the possible replacement of President Biden as a presidential candidate, and will pay less attention to the issue of immigration, on which even the Democrats themselves have hardened their position, so as not to lose more ground with the electorate.

Fourth, the new president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will have already taken office when the presidential elections are held in the United States, will have to define what will be the migration policy of Mexico in the face of the possible victory of Donald Trump, especially considering that the Republican candidate has threatened a mass deportation of migrants, once he takes office; although he has not been able to articulate a credible plan of how that deportation will do, when the same Republicans speak of a number of illegals between 18 and 20 million people.

Trump is basing this policy on the famous operation known pejoratively as “Wetback”, carried out during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower in the summer of 1954, by which 800,000 to one million undocumented workers, mostly Mexicans, were expelled from US territory, working mainly in the agricultural sector.

The conditions in which the Mexicans were detained and deported caused a serious estrangement between the governments of Mexico and the United States, because of the inhumane conditions in which the Mexicans were treated; for example, they were shipped to the holds of cargo ships bound for Tampico and Veracruz, with temperatures ranging from 40 to 50 degrees Celsius (104 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit), which resulted in numerous deaths.

According to Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alicia Barcena, Mexicans living in the United States contribute $324 billion to the U. S. economy each year; of every 10 agricultural workers in the United States, 7 are of Mexican origin; according to Mexican government estimates, there are about 12 million Mexicans living in the United States, of which half, 6 million have regularized their immigration status, which would leave a total of 6 million Mexicans as undocumented.

Fifth, the narrative that illegal migrants are the source of the main problems in developed economies has been strengthened, as has also been seen in Europe, where right-wing populist parties have based their electoral platforms on a refusal to accept more migrants, legal or illegal, in their countries, which should generate not only concern, but concerted political action by countries expelling or by those where migrants transit, as are Latin American, African and Asian countries.

In this regard, the government of Claudia Sheinbaum will have to assess whether multilateral action to negotiate with the United States on the migration issue will be useful to it; or if not, it prefers to treat it strictly from the bilateral level, where the asymmetry of power between the two countries becomes more present.

Sixth, the big losers in all this political dispute will, as always, be the migrants themselves, who, for the most part, seek to improve their lives, to flee situations of extreme poverty, violence and persecution, and find no solidarity in the world for their dramatic situation.