The United States plans to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada, the White House said Thursday, adding that the Biden administration is pushing peacefully to stop the flow of migrants across the border into Mexico.
White House press secretary Jane Sasaki said the United States plans to distribute 2.5 million doses of the vaccine with Mexico and 1.5 million with Canada, adding that it is “not finalized yet, but it is our goal.”
Millions of doses of the vaccine are sitting on American manufacturing sites. While its use has already been authorized in dozens of countries, the vaccine has not yet been approved by American regulators.
Ms. Sasaki said shipments to Mexico and Canada would essentially be loans, with the United States receiving doses of AstraZeneca or other vaccines in the future.
Some European countries suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine this week, a precautionary measure because some people who received shots later developed blood clots and severe bleeding. But on Thursday, Europe’s drug regulator declared the vaccine safe. AstraZeneca also said that a review of 17 million people who received the vaccine found that they were less likely to develop a dangerous clot than others.
The announcement of the vaccine distribution came at a crucial time in negotiations with Mexico. President Biden has moved quickly to destroy former President Trump’s signature immigration policies, halt the construction of the border wall, stop the rapid expulsion of children at the border, and propose citizenship for millions of immigrants to the United States.
But it is sticking to a central element of Mr. Trump’s agenda: rely on Mexico to stem the tide of people moving to the United States.
According to Mexico, Mr Biden asked Mexican President Andr વધારોs Manuel L zpez Obrador in a video call earlier this month if there was more work to be done to help solve the problem, citing an increase in the number of people migrating across the border in two decades and the highest expectations set by American agents. Can be done, Mexican officials and others briefed on the conversation.
The two presidents also discussed the possibility of sending some additional vaccine supplies to the United States, a senior Mexican official said. Mexico has publicly asked the Biden administration to send it a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
In a news briefing on Thursday, Ms. Pasaki said discussions between the United States and Mexico on vaccines and border security were “irrelevant” but also “overlapping.”
Asked by a reporter if the United States was “connected” to its offer to vaccinate Mexico, Ms. Sasaki replied that there were “many diplomatic conversations – parallel conversations – many levels” to participate in the discussions.
“There’s hardly an issue at any one time you’re discussing with any country,” Ms. Pasaki said. “It simply came to our notice then. It is not like that in any other country in the world. And so I don’t read more than the ability to give a vaccine dose. ”
Mexican officials also say vaccine protection efforts are different from negotiations on migration. But he acknowledges that the relationship between the United States and Mexico, which has suffered the world’s deadliest coronavirus epidemic, will come from a southern dose ship.
“Both governments cooperate on the basis of a systematic, safe and regular migration system,” Roberto Velasco, director general of the North American region at Mexico’s foreign ministry, said in a statement, referring to the alliance between the two countries on migration and vaccines.
But he said there is no Quid Pro Quos for vaccination: “These are two different issues, as we increase cooperation against a more humanitarian migration system and COVID-19 for the benefit of both our countries and the region.”
The Biden administration official declined to comment on the talks with Mexico, but noted that the two countries shared a common goal of reducing migration, given its root causes, and said they were working closely to stop the flow of people across the border. Is.
Mexico has agreed to increase its presence on its southern border with Guatemala to prevent migration from Central America, a government official said, and a Mexican official says his country recently stepped up efforts to stop migrants on the northern border with the United States. Is. As well.
But there are also indications that Mexico’s commitment to policing immigration – the central demand of Mr. Trump, who threatened tariffs against all Mexican goods until immigration is curbed – could be flagged in the Trump administration’s weak month.
From October to December last year, the number of Central Americans captured by Mexico decreased, while detentions by American agents increased, according to the number of Mexican government and data on Latin America, according to data prepared by the Washington Office for Human Rights.
The outgoing Trump administration was less likely to threaten tariffs again, so Mexico was motivated to return to its basic low expectations, said Adam Isaac, a border security expert at the Latin American and Washington Washington office fees.
The Biden administration’s appeal to do more against migration has put Mexico in a difficult position. Armed with Mexico to militarize the border, Mr Trump argues some Mexican officials argue that his tough policies could help ease the burden on migrants by preventing them from traveling north.
Officials and analysts say Mr Biden is less likely to resort to tariff threats to get his way. But now Mexico is being asked to hold the line to increase the number of migrants – while the Biden administration is signaling that the United States will welcome more migrants.
Washington D.C. “They look like good men and the people of Mexico look like bad people,” said Chris Chris, a located immigration consultant.
“All positive humanitarian policies are being pursued by the Biden administration.” Mr. Ram added, “And then there’s Mexico’s dirty work left.”
Speaking of Canada, many political opponents of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly pressured him to lobby the new Biden administration for the release of the vaccine. Many Canadians have expressed outrage that the United States has not shared any supplies with Canada, where no coronavirus vaccine is made.
As of Thursday, all of Canada’s vaccine supplies came from Europe or India, and Canada’s roll-out has been slower than in the United States and many other countries.
With Mexico, the Baden administration is urging American authorities to take more families being evicted and take enforcement action on Guatemala’s southern border with Mexico, two Mexican officials and two others briefed on the discussions.
Mr Lopez is also trying to find a way to increase the capacity of migrants to homes in Obrador shelters, which are bursting at the seams. In a statement Tuesday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorcas said he was “working with Mexico to increase the capacity to receive displaced families from the country.”
Mexican law that went into effect in January prohibits authorities from keeping migrant families and children in detention centers, and the lack of space in shelters has become a major problem.
“The shelters are on the verge of collapse,” said Enrique Valenzuela, the government’s chief coordinator for Chihuahua state migration efforts.
Local Chihuahua officials and asylum administrators say coordination between Mexican and American officials is broken. He says that during the last years of the Trump administration, American officials would inform their Mexican counterparts before deporting cross-border migrants and organize crossings at some border checkpoints with a good number of passengers.
Under the Biden administration, he says, customs and border protection agents now migrate to some obscure, understaffed checkpoints, harassing their Mexican counterparts as they search for dozens of migrants from the United States.
Ciudad Juarez and local government officials of the asylum administrators say Mexico is launching proceedings to arrest and deport migrants on the northern border. On a nearby daily basis, two of them said, Mexican authorities are intercepting families and a van loaded with livestock in a pickup truck – with foreigners scrambling on the floor to avoid this search.
One reason Mexico is willing to continue harassing is that, despite being a country that has long sent people north, there is a lot of resentment towards Central American immigrants.
“The level of negative attitudes we have towards migration has increased, so there will be no political costs,” said Tonatiyah Gill, who ran Mexico’s National Migration Agency in the first half of 2019 for Le Migration Obrador. But with Trump, we didn’t negotiate anything – we gave him a lot and he gave us nothing back, “he said, adding that the strategy with Mr Biden should be different.
Despite public tensions with Mexico under Mr Trump’s presidency, Mr Laz has been wary of the Obrador Biden administration, worried it may be more willing to intervene on local issues such as labor rights or the environment.
Instead, many Mexican officials say, his government has forced the United States to send humanitarian aid to Honduras and Guatemala to prevent those countries from migrating to catastrophic conditions, and many experts believe, forcing more people to evacuate.
Mexican officials have asked the United States to send more Honduran and Guatemalans captured in the United States directly to their home countries instead of freeing Mexico, making it difficult for them to try to cross the border again.
While negotiations on migration may be on a different track from Mexico’s request for additional vaccines from the United States, their need in Mexico is clear.
The virus has killed nearly 200,000 people in Mexico – the world’s third-largest mortality rate – and the country is relatively slow to vaccinate its population. It poses a potential political threat to Mr. López Obrador, whose party is holding crucial elections in June that will determine whether the president loses control of the legislature.
“Mexico needs the cooperation of the United States to jump on its economy and get vaccinated to get out of the health crisis,” said Rewandrew Sally, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC. “So there is room for both countries to reach an agreement based on aligned interests rather than risks.”
Michael de Shear Washington, D.C. and Washington Ian Austen From Ottawa, Canada.
