Next month the United States will grant temporary work visas to an additional 300,000 foreign workers, announced Mexican Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández on June 22.
Of these, 150,000 will be granted to Mexicans and another 150,000 will be granted to people in Central American countries, said López Hernández, who added that a formal announcement of the measure will be made in July during a visit by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to President Joe Biden.
“Now the president is going to Washington next month and an announcement will be made. The American government agreed to give . . . 300,000 temporary work visas—150,000 will be for Mexicans or foreigners who are in Mexico today waiting for the possibility to migrate north,” López Hernández told a group of business leaders in Tijuana, Mexico.
A large number of migrants from Central America, Caribbean countries, and South America as well as African and Asian nations have come to Mexico in recent years in order to seek entry to the United States, reports Mexico News Daily.
López Hernández said that the measure will help to reduce tensions along Mexican’s northern border.
López Hernández acknowledged that Mexico is still a country where “many” Mexicans, either because of poverty or because they do not find opportunities in their communities, are forced to migrate.
“Mexicans . . . or Central Americans . . . do not migrate for pleasure, they migrate because of necessity,” López Hernández added.
“It costs a lot in social terms that our country is a passage of migrants and every day we are talking with the American Government to try to generate conditions” for improved migration, he said.
