华盛顿——总统乔·拜登事实上，周一我会见了墨西哥总统安德烈斯·曼努埃尔·洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔，这是两人更全面地讨论移民、对抗冠状病毒以及在经济和国家安全问题上合作的机会。

“据我所知，当我们站在一起时，美国和墨西哥更强大，”拜登在会议开始时对洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔说，暗指两国之间过去的分歧。“我们一起工作会更安全。无论是应对我们共同边界的挑战，还是控制疫情。”

墨西哥总统曾表示，他打算在会议期间向拜登提出一项新的移民劳工计划，该计划每年可以让60万至80万墨西哥和中美洲移民在美国合法工作。

拜登政府的一名高级官员拒绝透露美国总统是支持还是反对这项提议，只是说两国都同意有必要扩大移民的法律途径。这位官员坚持匿名讨论私人谈话。被问及墨西哥总统的提议。白宫新闻秘书珍·普萨基说，恢复布拉采罗计划需要国会采取行动。

最初的“布拉采罗”计划允许墨西哥人在美国临时工作，以填补二战期间和战后几十年的劳动力短缺。洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔说，美国经济需要墨西哥工人，因为“他们的力量，他们的年轻。”

周一，洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔表示，他的新提议不仅适用于农业工人，也适用于其他行业和专业人士。

白宫还暗示，拜登不愿意在洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔的另一项请求上让步——向他的国家运送美国制造的冠状病毒疫苗。普萨基说，拜登不会同意这一举措，他说总统首先关注的是让美国人接种疫苗。事实证明，对加拿大采取类似的姿态也是两国关系中的一个问题。

这位拜登官员表示，这次会议将有助于拜登开始将与墨西哥的关系制度化，而不是让它由推特来决定——这是他的前任唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)更喜欢的外交形式。

美国与墨西哥和加拿大签署了一项贸易协定，最近一次是在2018年和2019年更新的，这两个国家是美国仅次于中国的第二大和第三大贸易伙伴。该贸易协议可能会使洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔(López Obrador)化解和消除墨西哥独立监管、监督和透明机构的努力复杂化。

还有一个问题是洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔是否会支持拜登解决气候变化和转向清洁能源的努力。墨西哥总统支持一项措施，使该国的国家电网优先考虑来自政府电厂的电力，其中许多电厂燃烧煤炭或燃油。

在周一的新闻发布会上，洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔证实他们将讨论气候变化，但他说，“拜登尊重我们的主权”，因为“他不认为墨西哥是美国的后院。”

特朗普时代的定义是关税威胁、打击移民和他在美国南部边境修建隔离墙的愿望，但特朗普似乎与墨西哥总统保持着友好的关系。

墨西哥没有为特朗普珍视的边境墙支付任何费用，尽管美国领导人一再声称会这样做。但洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔(Lopez Obrador)政府确实向墨西哥与危地马拉的南部边境派遣了部队，以应对前所未有的前往美国的寻求庇护者浪潮。墨西哥收容了约7万名寻求美国庇护的人，他们在移民法院等待日期。这项政策被称为“留在墨西哥”，官方称为“移民保护协议”。

拜登政府立即开始解除《留在墨西哥》，在总统上任的第一天，以及在宣布大约26000名案件仍在审理中的人可以在案件结束时在美国获释后不久，暂停对新来者的拘留。

但是拜登通过美国疾病控制和预防中心，保留了与大流行有关的特殊权力，可以立即驱逐任何从墨西哥抵达美国边境的人，而没有机会寻求庇护。

墨西哥人和许多中美洲人通常在不到两个小时内根据第42章的授权返回墨西哥——这是根据1944年公共卫生法的一部分命名的。拜登的助手已经表示，他们没有立即解除封锁的计划。

然而，拜登也对以前非法入境的移民表现出开放的态度。他支持一项法案，给予该国估计1100万没有合法身份的人合法身份和获得公民身份的途径。拜登还与特朗普决裂，支持允许数十万小时候非法来到美国的人留在美国的努力。

洛佩斯·奥布拉多尔周六表示，老龄化的美国也需要来自墨西哥的临时移民工人来维持经济增长。

他说，他计划告诉拜登，“我们最好开始对移民流进行管理。”

但随着越来越多的儿童没有签证进入美国，美国南部边境的压力越来越大。这给拜登政府带来了挑战。边境巡逻人员每天平均逮捕200多名没有父母的跨境儿童，但卫生和公众服务部为移民儿童保留的几乎所有7 100张床位都已满。

国土安全部部长亚历杭德罗·马约尔卡斯(Alejandro Mayorkas)周一试图反驳边境危机失控的说法。

“国土安全部的男女工作人员每周7天、每天24小时工作，以确保我们在边境没有危机，我们应对挑战的力度与挑战一样大，他们不是单独行动的，”马约尔卡斯说。

拜登政府保留了在新冠肺炎疫情爆发之初实施的一项政策，即迅速驱逐在边境抓获的人，并试图劝阻人们不要试图旅行。预计将参加周一双边会议的马约尔卡斯重申了政府对移民的信息，即现在不是来美国的时候。

“我们不是说不要来，”梅尔卡斯说。“我们是说现在别来。”

Biden meets with Mexican president amid migration issues

WASHINGTON -- PresidentJoe Bidenmet virtually Monday with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — a chance for the pair to talk more fully about migration, confronting the coronavirus and cooperating on economic and national security issues.

“This is what I know, the United States and Mexico are stronger when we stand together,” Biden told López Obrador at the outset of the meeting, alluding to past differences between the two countries. “We’re safer when we work together. Whether it’s addressing the challenges of our shared border, or getting this pandemic under control.”

Mexico's president had said he intends during the meeting to propose to Biden a new immigrant labor program that could bring 600,000 to 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants a year to work legally in the United States.

A senior Biden administration official declined to say whether the U.S. president would back or oppose the proposal, saying only that both countries agree on the need to expand legal pathways for migration. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Asked about the Mexican president’s proposal. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that reinstituting the Bracero program would require action by Congress.

The original “Bracero” program allowed Mexicans to work temporarily in the United States to fill labor shortages during World War II and for a couple of decades after the war. López Obrador said the U.S. economy needs Mexican workers because of “their strength, their youth.”

On Monday, López Obrador said his new proposal would be a program not only for agriculture workers but for other sectors and professionals.

The White House also signaled that Biden was not willing to budge on another López Obrador request — to send U.S. manufactured coronavirus vaccines to his country. Psaki said Biden would not agree to the move, saying the president was first focused on getting Americans vaccinated. A similar posture toward Canada has also proved to be a wrinkle in that relationship.

The Biden official said the meeting will help Biden begin to institutionalize the relationship with Mexico, rather than let it be determined by tweets — a preferred form of diplomacy by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The United States shares a trade agreement — most recently updated in 2018 and 2019 — with Mexico and Canada, which are its second- and third-biggest trade partners after China. The trade agreement could complicate López Obrador's efforts to possibly defund and eliminate independent regulatory, watchdog and transparency agencies in Mexico.

There are also questions of whether López Obrador will warm to Biden's efforts to address climate change and move to cleaner energy sources. The Mexican president supports a measure to make that country's national grids prioritize power from government plants, many of which burn coal or fuel oil.

At Monday's news conference, López Obrador confirmed they would discuss climate change, but he said “Biden is respectful of our sovereignty” because “he doesn’t see Mexico as America’s backyard."

The Trump era was defined by the threat of tariffs, crackdowns on migration and his desire to construct a wall on the U.S. southern border, yet Trump appeared to enjoy an amicable relationship with his Mexican counterpart.

Mexico paid nothing for Trump’s cherished border wall, despite the U.S. leader’s repeated claims that it would. But López Obrador’s government did send troops to Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala to deal with an unprecedented wave of asylum-seekers bound for the U.S. Mexico hosted about 70,000 people seeking U.S. asylum while they waited for dates in immigration courts, a policy known as Remain in Mexico and officially as Migrant Protection Protocols.

The Biden administration immediately began to unwind Remain in Mexico, suspending it for new arrivals on the president’s first day in office and soon after announcing that an estimated 26,000 people with still-active cases could be released in the United States while their cases played out.

But Biden, through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has kept extraordinary pandemic-related powers in place to immediately expel anyone arriving at the U.S. border from Mexico without an opportunity to seek asylum.

Mexicans and many Central Americans are typically returned to Mexico in less than two hours under Title 42 authority — so named for a section of a 1944 public health law. Biden aides have signaled they have no immediate plans to lift it.

Yet Biden has also shown an openness to immigrants who previously came to the country illegally. He is backing a bill to give legal status and a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people in the country who don’t have it. Biden also broke with Trump by supporting efforts to allow hundreds of thousands of people who came to the U.S. illegally as young children to remain in the country.

López Obrador said Saturday that an aging United States will also need temporary immigrant workers from Mexico to sustain economic growth.

He said he plans to tell Biden, “It is better that we start putting order on migratory flows."

But pressures are building at the U.S. southern border with an increase in children crossing into the country without visas. This has created a challenge for the Biden administration. Border Patrol agents are apprehending an average of more than 200 children crossing the border without a parent per day, but nearly all 7,100 beds for immigrant children maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services are full.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday sought to push back against the notion that the crisis at the border was spinning out of control.

“The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security, are working around the clock seven days a week to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border, that we manage the challenge as acute as the challenge is, and they are not doing that alone,” Mayorkas said.

The Biden administration has preserved a policy, imposed at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, of quickly expelling people captured along the border and has tried to dissuade people from attempting the journey. Mayorkas, who is expected to take part in Monday's bilateral meeting, reiterated the administration's message to migrants that now is not the time to come to the United States.

“We are not saying don’t come," Mayorkas said. “We are saying don’t come now."