{"id":22055,"date":"2023-12-30T02:58:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-30T08:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=22055"},"modified":"2023-12-30T02:58:14","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T08:58:14","slug":"biden-administration-backtracks-on-democratic-decline-as-root-cause-of-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=22055","title":{"rendered":"Biden administration backtracks on \u2018democratic decline\u2019 as root cause of migration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The White House on Thursday issued a joint communiqu\u00e9 with Mexico<\/a> that included \u201cdemocratic decline\u201d as a root cause of migration, and hours later deleted the phrase<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mexican version did not include the phrase but was otherwise an exact translation using the agreed-upon language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The joint statement was the result of a meeting<\/a> between Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador <\/a>and a U.S. delegation led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken,<\/a> Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas <\/a>and homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both countries agreed to continue working together to better control migration in the Western Hemisphere by addressing root causes, continuing to build legal pathways for migrants and disrupting human smuggling networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe two countries reaffirmed their existing commitments on fostering an orderly, humane, and regular migration,\u201d read the White House\u2019s original statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis includes reinforcing our partnership to address the root causes of migration, such as poverty, inequality, democratic decline, and violence, and for the two countries\u2019 initiative for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mexican version, identical save for the phrase \u201cdemocratic decline,\u201d caused an uproar among the country\u2019s opposition, which has raised red flags over L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s institutional reforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador has derided institutions such as the country\u2019s independent electoral authority as \u201cneoliberal,\u201d \u201cconservative\u201d and too costly for the country, pushing reforms and budget cuts to weaken them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Mexico\u2019s opposition, L\u00f3pez Obrador\u2019s actions are the very definition of \u201cdemocratic decline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, the top foreign policy adviser to opposition presidential candidate X\u00f3chitl G\u00e1lvez, accused Mexico\u2019s government on X<\/a>, the platform formerly known as Twitter, of \u201cshaving off\u201d the term after the White House published its initial version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the White House reissued the English language version of the statement hours later, this time without \u201cdemocratic decline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An official with knowledge of the talks told The Hill the language was added by U.S. officials after the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDue to a version control issue, the initial version of the document that we posted online included an additional phrase that had not been discussed with the Mexicans. Promoting democratic values in the region is a top priority for the Biden-Harris Administration and we have worked with Mexico to promote these values, including most recently in Guatemala and Venezuela,\u201d a National Security Council spokesperson told The Hill in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mexican officials had requested to include the U.S. embargo against Cuba and sanctions against Venezuela in the root causes section, but U.S. officials did not agree to that language, and it was not included in any of the three versions of the communiqu\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House on Thursday issued a joint communiqu\u00e9 with Mexico that included \u201cdemocratic decline\u201d as a root cause of migration, and hours later deleted the phrase. The Mexican version did not include the phrase but was otherwise an exact translation using the agreed-upon language. The joint statement was the result of a meeting between Mexican President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[25474,10459,25473,25476,25475],"class_list":["post-22055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-as","tag-biden-administration","tag-decline-of-democracy","tag-reclaim","tag-roots-of-immigration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22057,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22055\/revisions\/22057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}