This is just as stupid as it sounds.
Vice President Kamala Harris is set to meet next month with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss solutions to the immigration crisis at the border between the two countries.
One of those possible solutions is López Obrador’s “Planting Life” initiative, which he pitched during a virtual climate summit hosted April 22 by President Joe Biden, The Associated Press reported Saturday.
The idea is that the U.S. government would offer temporary work visas possibly leading to citizenship to migrants willing to help restore forests in Mexico and Central America.
The Mexican president offered Biden the opportunity of a lifetime, saying his U.S. counterpart could “finance the Planting Life program in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador,” according to the New York Post.
“The proposal is that we extend this program to southeastern Mexico and Central America, to plant 3 billion more trees and create 1.2 million jobs,” López Obrador explained.
He claims the program would motivate farmers to stay on their land instead of migrating to the United States.
Does this sound like a great deal for the U.S.?
Common sense says not at all. But, as we know, the Biden administration is lacking in common sense.
Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard tweeted Saturday about López Obrador’s May 7 virtual meeting with Harris.
“The meeting will discuss cooperation to deal with the pandemic and Mexico’s proposal to extend the Planting Life program to Central America to deal with forced migration due to poverty,” Ebrard wrote in a follow-up tweet.
“It will be a productive and cordial conversation.”
All that would truly make this meeting productive for the United States, though, is Harris rejecting the plan in its entirety. Thankfully, the vice president’s office did not mention Planting Life whatsoever in its statement, saying only that the meeting will focus on “the common goals of prosperity, good governance and addressing the root causes of migration” — so Americans could walk away from this meeting relatively unharmed.
It’s not surprising that Mexico would offer the Biden administration such a proposal as this, though, given that the White House already has elected to put America last in its immigration policy.
According to Customs and Border Protection data, Border Patrol agents encountered over 172,000 illegal immigrants in March alone, an increase of more than 70 percent from February’s already-staggering 101,028 encounters.
Further data shows that unaccompanied minors are also coming in droves to the border. 18,890 unaccompanied minors were encountered last month by Border Patrol agents, six times more than the number encountered in March 2020. Under Biden, twice as many children are in Border Patrol custody compared with the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, with law enforcement still reeling from the effects of Biden’s executive order revoking emergency status from the border, drug cartels are able to essentially waltz beyond the incomplete border wall and into American communities, causing havoc wherever they tread.
It’s clear to everyone paying attention, domestic and foreign, that the Biden administration does not explicitly care about the border crisis.
Mexico and the rest of the world can see that Biden is either inept or malicious in his handling of the border, and — as can be seen by López Obrador’s ridiculous proposal — they will attempt to capitalize on it.
While it’s possible this proposal will be accepted, given the administration’s actions, we can only hope that sanity will prevail.
Story cited here.
