Mexico’s President Slams Ron DeSantis for Migration Curbs

Mexico’s president slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday just hours before a phone meeting with President Joe Biden scheduled for Tuesday.

The criticism came because DeSantis prodded the state legislature to adopt migration reforms, including laws that curb the inflow of illegal workers into blue-collar jobs that can be done by Americans — including by Latino Americans.

“Now I found out that the Florida governor — imagine, Florida, which is full of migrants! — is taking repressive, inhumane measures against migrants in Florida because he wants to be a [presidential] candidate,” said Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). He added:

Why does [DeSantis] have to take advantage of people’s pain, of migrants’ pain, of people’s need for political gain?  … This is immoral — this is politicking.

The complaints were spotlighted by Politico.

In contrast, Obrador praised his dealmaking with Biden as he revealed that he would talk Tuesday morning with Biden.

“We will continue talking about the cooperation we have, which is very, very good and which we will maintain,” he said, according to a report by TheHill.com.

Obrador and Biden have announced deals to stabilize — but not stop or reduce — the huge flow of wage-cutting economic migrants through Mexico into U.S. jobs and housing.

In Florida, DeSantis’ new reforms include penalties for transporting illegal migrants into the state, as well as a law requiring more companies to use E-Verify. The E-Verify system allows employers to easily confirm that job seekers are not illegals.

The E-Verify rule is opposed by many business groups who prefer to hire cheap, diligent, and compliant illegals. Much of the illegal hiring is done via subcontractors that protect the major U.S. companies from penalties.

On May 7, the scale of the corruption problem was exposed when illegals — and likely, some sympathetic legal workers — walked off a construction site in Florida:

The post-1990 inflow of illegal migrants in middle-class U.S. construction jobs slashed Americans’ wages, pushed huge numbers of Americans out of good jobs, and deterred many younger Americans from entering the unstable sector.

In 2018, an inspector for California agencies explained how Americans were pushed out of the blue-collar construction sector:

In the 80’s and early 90’s when I was a contractor, it wasn’t unusual to see undocumented workers doing landscaping, demolition, then it became roofing, and concrete work. So the heavier, more difficult, and dirtier sort of trades where you actually got in the ditches were the first trades to be taken over [by illegal aliens]. Then the rest of them began to fall. The drywall was next, painting, framing was the last, and now electrical and plumbing has been taken over. All the trades finally went to the illegal immigrants.

Decades later, millions of Americans remained mired in poverty and drugs.

A 2020 report funded by a pro-migration group reported E-Verify would help narrow the income gap between the least-educated and better-educated American workers, said a report funded by a pro-migration business group.

Mexico’s president is a Latino ethnic nationalist who wants to help more Latinos from Central America migrate to his northern neighbor, the United States.

Biden has welcomed that goal. “Look, all of you know all of us in the United States are immigrants,” Biden said. “Mine go all the way back to the Irish famine,” Biden told a January 10 press conference with AMLO and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Biden added:

At the top of our shared agenda today is keeping North America the most competitive, prosperous, and resilient economic region of the world …  [and creating] pathways for immigrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti that were seeking a better life here in the United States of America.

AMLO also asked Biden to amnesty Mexican illegal migrants:

I fully trust President Biden … I’ve asked President Biden to insist before the U.S. Congress to regularize the migration situations of millions of Mexicans who have been in the States working, living in the United States, and contributing to the development of that great nation, which is the United States of America.

“Just imagine: There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States — 40 million [including people] who were born here in Mexico, [or] who are the children of people who were born in Mexico,” he gushed.

But AMLO also used the press conference to celebrate economic growth for Mexicans:

The [Mexican government] budget is used for development and supporting the poorest sectors of our [Mexican] population. Today, we not only have jobs, employment, we have seen reductions in violence. We have less [em]migration as well … what we can see is this flame — this flame which is alive. I’m talking about the flame of hope.

On May 8, as he criticized DeSantis, AMLO also lashed at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who pressure Mexican policy to curb migration. Abbott’s power comes from his ability to slow up cross-border trade by stringently enforcing state safety rules.