Newly elected Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador intends to curb immigration into the United States by economically developing his country’s northern states.
Loprez Obrador — who entered office in the beginning of December with a leftist agenda — on Monday decreed lower rates for income and value-added taxes in over 40 municipalities that border the U.S. The minimum wage within these municipalities will also be risen to 177 pesos — equivalent to $9 — beginning in 2019. Lopez Obrador also plans new infrastructure projects and more social welfare programs to benefit Mexican citizens.
“This is a very important project to boost investment and job creation,” Lopez Obrador said during a Saturday event in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, according to Reuters.
The ambitious agenda is meant to bolster the economic standing of towns and cities dotted along Mexico’s northern border, the forefront of America’s illegal immigration crisis. Lopez Obrador, facing extreme pressure from his northern neighbor, has pledged to reduce migration into the U.S., and hopes to do so by enhancing his citizens’ quality of life.
On the other side of the border, the fight over illegal immigration has reached an apex.
The federal government has remained in a shutdown because U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats cannot reach a budget agreement. The Republican president has vowed to veto any bill that does not include funding for a wall on the country’s border with Mexico, and said he is willing to ride a government shutdown for as long as it takes.
A group of Central American migrants -mostly from Honduras- get over a fence as they try to reach the U.S.-Mexico border near the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico, on Nov. 25, 2018. (Photo credit: PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images)
The immigration battle has drawn ardent public support from both sides. A GoFundMe page, for example, has raised well over $18 million from hundreds of thousands of American donors in a short time. (RELATED: FBI Reveals Record Number Of Illegal Aliens Barred From Buying Guns)
“I started this GoFundMe because I felt that politicians and the government wasn’t taking the action that they needed to take,” Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee veteran who launched the GoFundMe page on Dec. 16, said to The Daily Caller. “[House Minority Leader] Nancy [Pelosi] and [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck [Schumer], they are doing it for their own political agenda. They don’t want the wall.”
The fight over a border wall will continue into the new year.
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