Mexico, U.S. will partner with or without Trump, foreign minister says

WASHINGTON — Despite the sting of Donald Trump’s recent visit to her country, Mexico’s foreign minister says she still hopes to work with whomever becomes the next U.S. president, especially on issues of migration.

The goal of both countries should be to ensure migration flows are more orderly and safe and to address the root causes of migration, Claudia Ruiz Massieu told Paste BN Friday.

Ruiz Massieu smiled uncomfortably when asked about Trump’s Aug. 31 visit to Mexico, for a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. The visit by the Mexico-bashing Republican U.S. presidential candidate was widely panned by the Mexican public. Then-Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, who engineered the meeting, resigned as a result of the flak, Pena Nieto said Thursday.

The U.S. presidential campaign, in which Trump has described Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists and has pledged to build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it, exposed an unpleasant fact, she said.

“In some segments of the American people there is a misconception and lack of knowledge about Mexico,” she said. “Mexicans object, and I object, to negative stereotypes about us in the United States.”

But Ruiz Massieu defended the invitation as a necessary conversation between her president and a potential leader of the United States. Because whoever becomes president, “Mexico will continue to work with the United States in the future to look for ways to work together, for prosperity,” she said.

Ruiz Massieu was in Washington to participate in a meeting on migration chaired by Vice President Joe Biden with leaders from Central America, Colombia and Peru, and to talk security issues with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

She portrayed Mexico as experiencing the migration issue in a multidimensional fashion unlike almost any other country in the world. This includes reverse migration from the U.S., transit migrants from other countries traveling to the U.S., migrants who seek jobs in Mexico, in addition to traditional Mexican migration to the north.

Part of her message to America is that Mexico is working to improve its economy and to develop a border region with the U.S. that benefits both countries economically and culturally. Mexico's economy has developed so well as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other free trade policies that last year 400,000 more Mexicans returned from the U.S. voluntarily to find work in the country of their birth than Mexicans who traveled north in search of work, she said.

Mexico is also investing in infrastructure and job creation projects in Central American countries to help reduce the root cause of migration. It’s providing health and family reunification services for migrants en route to the U.S. to deal with the issue in a comprehensive way. But migration is a phenomenon that all countries must work on together, she said, as agreed upon at the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York, where the issue was chosen as a global priority for the next two years.

“Migration is not something you are going to stop or that’s bad,” she said. “It’s part of human nature.”

The U.S. and Mexico need to work together, she said, repeating a message she has taken to all corners of the U.S.

The two countries build cars, computers and cellphones together, and represent huge markets for products made in both countries. She listed statistics that she repeats to anyone who’ll listen:

Six million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico. The U.S. sells more to Mexico than it does to Japan and China combined. The U.S. buys more from Mexico than it does from China, India and Russia combined.

“Most  Americans” realize “that our future is linked because we’ve chosen to be friends and neighbors,” she said.