Vice President Kamala Harris will finally kick off her efforts to curb the ongoing border crisis next month, meeting on May 7th with Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to discuss his plans to address the “root causes” of migration from Central America.
The pair will reportedly discuss Obrador’s breakthrough plan to address both rampant poverty and climate change: a program that puts people to work planting trees in Mexico in exchange for American citizenship.
“President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will discuss a plan to offer citizenship as part of a tree-planting proposal he wants the US to help finance when he meets with Vice President Kamala Harris next month,” according to the New York Post. “It involves planting 1 billion fruit and timber trees, and Lopez Obrador proposed the US grant six-month work visas that lead to citizenship to workers who participate in the program.”
Obrador reportedly broached the possibility of the United States funding the massive tree-planting project at the Biden administration’s Earth Day climate summate last week, though he did not say how much the full program would cost. According to Bloomberg, the Mexican arm of the program is estimated to cost around $3 billion.
“You, President Biden, can finance the Planting Life program in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador,” he told President Joe Biden during the pair’s discussion on Thursday. “The proposal is that we extend this program to southeastern Mexico and Central America, to plant 3 billion more trees and create 1.2 million jobs.”
Obrador added that the program has already planted around 700,000 trees, but did not elaborate on whether the program also created jobs for foreign workers in Mexico. Bloomberg reported that the program has its drawbacks, namely that farmers who need cash are cutting down jungle land in order to replant the government’s trees, thereby getting a share of the grant money while actually working against the stated goal of “reforestation.”
“In many cases, people said, ‘Well, I have my hectare of jungle but the program is coming so I’ll cut down the jungle, use the trees for my house or to sell the wood or whatever, and when the program comes I’ll sow seeds again,’” one Mexican ecology professor told the outlet.
On Saturday, Mexico’s foreign minister noted, on Twitter, that Obrador plans to bring the program up again when the pair meet to discuss how to address certain “root causes” of continued migration from Central America.
“Mexico’s Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard wrote in a Saturday Twitter posting that Lopez Obrador intends to discuss the tree program with Harris at their virtual meeting on May 7 as well as the pandemic and coronavirus vaccines,” the Post noted.
Harris, who was appointed to handle the border crisis nearly a month ago, has yet to make any significant strides in handling the continuous, record-breaking flow of migrants across the United States’ southern border. On Sunday, Harris told CNN that she plans to travel to Central America soon to meet with leaders there, but claimed that COVID-19 protocols are keeping her grounded in the United States until early summer.
Although the American arm of the crisis is at the southern border, Harris said she has no plans to tour border states because that situation is within the purview of the Department of Homeland Security.