During a press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador raised a few points on behalf of Mexico in response to President Donald Trump's orders to limit U.S.-Mexico immigration. "One couldn't close the border completely. Because there's a degree of integration that makes it indispensable to keep the border open."

Mexico Tourism Ministry Secretary Miguel Torruco Marques reported that they already started to plan on an international campaign that they would launch as soon as the pandemic has stabilized. The tagline would be: "Mexico needs you."

While the U.S. economy has started its slow recovery, it is predicted that migration flows from Mexico will increase because the economy is still in recession. In this vein, Lopez Obrador said that it was important not to "paralyze" commercial activity.


Does the U.S. Need Mexico?

Contrary to Lopez Obrador's conviction of strong mutual ties, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center Duncan Wood believed that the business community simply did not trust the Mexican president. "We've seen the impact of that on investment."

Despite that Mexico has extensive business negotiations with the U.S., businesses thought that Lopez Obrador lacked the necessary experience in dealing with commerce. Economists worried that they would lose trades from the U.S. in favor of China, which was starting to reopen its economy.

"When [the U.S.] starts looking for suppliers in Mexico, it could still be closed, and they'll look to China," said Valeria Moy, an economist from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. She added that the production chains would be at risk.

Analysts are still debating whether the economic imbalance would increase migration to the U.S., but this happened in the past.

Wood expected that if Mexican migration is renewed and the country is still suffering from economic and healthcare crises by the pandemic, "Things would move in the opposite direction."

Lopez Obrador was of the mind that Trump acknowledged the mutual need of the countries to lift one another from economic recession. He added, "United States farmers need Mexican workers."

He said that to get out of the economic "paralysis," the U.S. must consider that Mexico played a part in production and manufacturing in businesses, especially in the automotive industry, where companies from both countries asked permission from Lopez Obrador to resume business in the wake of economic recession.


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Closing Borders for Migrants

This week, Trump signed a decree that granted emergency powers limiting immigration to the nation to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. In the past few weeks, the Trump administration has already implemented stricter measures for migration that greatly affected asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to data from the new Customs and Border Protection, this was achieved through the use of emergency powers issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that allowed the immediate eviction of border crossers.

There were over 250 immigrants detained in U.S. custody who were positive for COVID-19. This was not representative of the actual number of cases as Immigration and Customs Enforcement only conducted a little over 400 tests on 32,000 detainees across the country.

As early as March, Trump already resumed the construction of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border. There were talks of the U.S. leader pressuring Lopez Obrador by ordering authorities to strengthen measures against illegal immigration with tariff threats and border closures.