Mexico’s president said Friday that he is willing to help out with a surge of migrants that led to the closure of border crossings with the United States, but he wants the U.S. government to open talks with Cuba and send more development aid to migrants’ home countries.

The comments by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador came a day after the U.S. announced that a delegation of top U.S. officials would visit Mexico for talks on how to enforce immigration rules at the two countries’ shared border.

Also Friday, U.S. authorities reopened two cross-border railroad crossings in Texas, while keeping operations limited or suspended at other border crossings. And figures released Friday show arrests for crossing the U.S. border from Mexico nudged 1.2% higher in November from October, one of the latest signs of what Troy Miller, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, described this week as “unprecedented” migration flows.

  • @Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug
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    7011 months ago

    My dad has been saying for decades how ridiculous it is we have neglected this entire hemisphere, causing damage and then complaining when the countries we’ve directly impacted have people who want a better life.

    Imagine the position we’d be in if we moved all of our low cost manufacturing labor to central and South America instead of China. There’s no reason we can’t be helping our direct neighbors.

    • @Sweetpeaches69
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      2311 months ago

      That’s a great, and very agreeable point, Waluigi’s Talking Buttplug!

    • @[email protected]
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      611 months ago

      Not neglecting, more like actively sabotaging. Since the 1800s the US has been actively interfering in the politics of every country from Mexico southward. Fomenting coups against popular governments and giving full support to brutal and genocidal dictators all to protect US business interests.

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        The 20th century called and wants its foreign policy back!

        Long story short, while what you say is historically true, it has little or nothing to do with current reality and in fact, your version is insulting and unwelcome to current Latin American nations inasmuch as it’s a story that privileges Anglo-American narratives as somehow having primacy.

        Go ahead and go fuck yourself.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      Leaving aside all of the maquiladoras that have sprung up across the border since the passage of NAFTA, sure, your old man has a point.

      What really happened is that we did move our low-cost manufacturing to Latin America, but our capitalist rent-seeking overlords figured out that playing ball with the CCP was even more lucrative and so they willingly allowed low-cost Asian manufacturing to take over.

      That said, it’s still true that the US does more trade with Mexico than we do with China.

  • @xarexyouxmadx
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    3911 months ago

    It’s criminal that Cuba has been crushed with sanctions for decades all because the US doesn’t like their government. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot how people would react

    • @Cornelius_Wangenheim
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      2311 months ago

      It’s mostly because of Cubans in Florida. If Florida wasn’t a swing state, no one would give a shit.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        It used to be, but I doubt I’d even call it a swing state anymore. Democratics need to stop caring what they think. Florida Cubans are like the most conservative people on the planet. Like, leading the Proud Boys level conservative. They’re never voting for a Democrat.

    • Flying Squid
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      2211 months ago

      You can’t even claim it’s because the U.S. doesn’t deal with communist governments, since the U.S. does not have remotely similar sanctions against China or Vietnam. People can travel to Vietnam or China whenever they want to. No special dispensations needed on the U.S. side.

      Meanwhile, Canadians are catching rays at fancy Cuban resorts. I know. My uncle was one of them.

      • @[email protected]
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        -211 months ago

        Yeah the US is just butt hurt that they were so humiliated by such a small nation and now they won’t let it go.

        • Flying Squid
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          2511 months ago

          We were humiliated by Vietnam as well. We let that go. Cuba is different because a minority of Cubans who fled to the U.S. when Castro came to power wield a large amount of influence in Florida politics, and thus national politics.

          • @[email protected]
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            611 months ago

            That’s fair, it hurts when your slaves are taken away lol.

            It’s crazy that a single state has that much international sway though.

            • JJROKCZ
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              611 months ago

              Have to remember that some American states are more like countries when you compare physical size, population, gdp, resources, etc. The United States is a collection of nation-states in one union with federal oversight, kinda like a workers union.

            • Flying Squid
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              611 months ago

              Agreed. Thankfully, those people are dying out along with a lot of Florida’s aging population, so this will hopefully not last.

    • @Cuttlefish1111
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      111 months ago

      There many businesses making large profits by keeping the embargo in place.

  • @[email protected]
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    3611 months ago

    I really don’t understand why Cuba is still on some dumb blacklist when the Cold War has been over for decades. I mean… WTF?!?

    • @[email protected]
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      1111 months ago

      Cuban immigrants in Florida tend to hate the Cuban government. Opening up relations would mean losing all of their votes, and nobody wants to risk that.

      • @randon31415
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        1011 months ago

        Oh, no, democrats wouldn’t have a chance of winning in Florida? That is almost as bad as hurting our chances of winning Mississippi!

        • @[email protected]
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          511 months ago

          Pretty sure the Cuban population tends to vote republican because of the press about democrats being socialist wannabes or whatever.

          Didn’t Obama loosen restrictions on Cuba and the Trump put it back to how it was before?

      • @negativeyoda
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        311 months ago

        They don’t vote Democrat regardless because of Kennedy

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        Except the endgame is to change the government for the better. Perhaps they are wedded to the idea of a permanent bad government in Cuba, which forms their personality.

    • @SCB
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      811 months ago

      It’s so fucking stupid man. Like, even assuming you hate communism, would the best way to beat communism not be to heavily trade with it and just McDonalds the communism away? Like if capitalism is superior it will just spread around and win.

      Makes no sense to me.

    • @Furedadmins
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      311 months ago

      Because Obama moved to normalize relations a little bit so Trump had to set it back further.

  • PugJesus
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    3011 months ago

    Good. This could be mutually beneficial for the Biden administration and Cuba.

    • JJROKCZ
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      111 months ago

      It would hand the Floridian vote to Republicans though. Yes stopping the embargo is right, but the Cubans in Florida will never support it

      • PugJesus
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        11 months ago

        Man, as I outlined in another comment, Republicans already own Florida, and it’s only getting worse. Florida is lost for a decade or more. If there was ever a time when we don’t need to worry about pissing off Floridan voting blocs, it’s now.

        • @QuaternionsRock
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          111 months ago

          I agree Florida is probably a lost cause, but making a policy decision based on that alone isn’t how you win the game American politicians are forced to play.

          “What would turn red?”, is one question that must be asked, and assuming Florida is a lost cause, the answer may well be “nothing”. But an equally important question is, “What would turn blue?”, and unfortunately, I would guess the answer is also “nothing”. Conservative Texans would be stoked to get help from Mexico at the border, but they’re not gonna vote for Biden over it. It also wouldn’t surprise me if being “soft on Cuba” is still a losing position among several Dem bases, especially older neoliberals.

          • PugJesus
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            411 months ago

            Relief from immigration pressure would reduce the validity of complaints about the ‘migrant crush’, which might improve numbers amongst ‘swing voters’, and the end of the dispute with Cuba would be positive for the Biden administration’s foreign policy efforts, considering that our position on Cuba is still deeply unpopular internationally.

    • FuglyDuck
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      811 months ago

      Not really, it’s past time we lifted sanctions.

      Honestly? I’m pretty sure it’s the sugar lobby that is the reason for it. Lots of sugar industry types would have to compete again, and we can’t have that.

  • @Skyrmir
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    1311 months ago

    We can’t negotiate with Cuba for another 10 or 20 years, we have to wait for more old Cubans to die in Miami first.

    • PugJesus
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      3911 months ago

      What does it matter at this point? Florida is so Republican that it’s chasing down imaginary LGBT folk in every schoolhouse. They’re lost to the Democratic Party - so why should the threat of their votes frighten us away from doing the right thing anymore?

      I understand you aren’t defending them, just stating the fact of their obstinacy, I just felt obligated to mention that the strategic outlook in Florida has changed this past decade.

      • FuglyDuck
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        1611 months ago

        I vote we wall off Florida and nickname the wall “Americans cock ring”

        • @[email protected]
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          511 months ago

          Instead of Cuba, we should put isolative sanctions on Florida.

          (I will accept calling them a “cock ring”.)

          • FuglyDuck
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            211 months ago

            No no. Florida is America’s dick the wall is the cockring.

            (And… not just because of the geographic er, similarities,)

      • @No_Ones_Slick_Like_Gaston
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        511 months ago

        Not only fucked it up, it made almost impossible to revert the decision as it is now required that house And senate agree to do it, when in the past is was just a matter of a presidential signature.
        I live in FL and the dissociation from Cuban expats towards the world, and the people who still live in the island and their reality are astounding. Some laugh and think of themselves as whites ; like the proud boy Tarrio.

        • @[email protected]
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          411 months ago

          They’re only whites as long as there are darker people around, that’s what they should remember.

  • Drusas
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    11 months ago

    You mean try to address the source of the problems which lead desperate people to come to the US in the first place instead of malign brown people once they’re already here? How dreadfully reasonable. Republicans would hate it. “You’re not hurting the right people!”

  • guajojo
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    11 months ago

    Talks with the Cuban regimen/dictatorship? Maybe ask Mexico’s president what he thinks of the thousands of Cubans that flee the island every year and the cruelty that the regimen show to their own citizens. Of course he will have no comments since they’re on the same team.

    Internet trolls can downvote all you want, this is not reddit you don’t have the same leverage here.