By Allan Wall
03/29/2024
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has been in the news lately.
AMLO was interviewed by Sharyn Alfonsi on 60 Minutes. You can see my Border Hawk blog entry about the interview here.
I also discussed it in my latest interview with Silvio Canto, Jr. You can view that below.
AMLO weighed in on the Baltimore bridge collapse to score a rhetorical point on immigration. It turned out that the workers who fell into the water when the bridge collapsed were from Mexico and Central America.
From the Associated Press:
The construction workers who went missing in the Baltimore bridge collapse came to the Maryland area from Mexico or Central America, including an enterprising Honduran father and husband who started a delivery business before the pandemic forced him to find other work, according to his family. Police managed to close bridge traffic seconds before a cargo ship slammed into one of the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s supports early Tuesday, causing the span to fall into the frigid Patapsco River. There wasn’t time for a maintenance crew filling potholes on the span to get to safety. At least eight people fell into the water and two were rescued. Two bodies were recovered Wednesday [the 27th] and four remained missing and were presumed dead.
Central American and Mexican families mourn the workers lost in the Baltimore bridge collapse, by Claudio Escalon, Associated Press, March 28, 2024
The Mexican President spoke about the bridge disaster and spun it into a political point.
In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said three Mexicans were on the bridge when it fell, including one who was injured but rescued and two who were still missing. He wouldn’t share their names for the families’ privacy.
As the article explains, the bodies of two of the missing workers were later recovered. One was Mexican and one was Guatemalan.
The tragedy illustrated the contributions that migrants make to the U.S. economy, López Obrador said.
“This demonstrates that migrants go out and do risky jobs at midnight. And for this reason, they do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive, irresponsible politicians in the United States,” he said.
Yes, this was a tragedy. However, note that the U.S. is constantly pressured to allow foreigners into our country and to work at these sorts of jobs. Then when a tragedy occurs, it’s another opportunity to criticize people who were against this sort of thing in the first place.
Notice AMLO’s argument:
… . [T]hey do not deserve to be treated as they are by certain insensitive irresponsible politicians in the United States.
The Mexican president is referring to American politicians who are against illegal immigration. That’s what he means by treating immigrants badly.
So we’re bad if we don’t let them in, and we’re bad if they are working on a bridge that collapses.
Some Americans are making the same argument as AMLO did on this topic.
See The Baltimore bridge collapse is an immigration story from the New Jersey Monitor and Baltimore bridge victims were immigrants in riskier, hard-to fill jobs in Marketplace.org.
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