Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris would probably visit Mexico on June 8 after mid-term legislative elections are held a couple of days earlier in the country.
Lopez Obrador has yet to meet in person with Harris or U.S. President Joe Biden since the new administration took office.
Biden, who has moved away from predecessor Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration approach, gave Harris the job of leading U.S. efforts with Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle countries – Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – to stop migrants from crossing into the United States.
“We have to regulate migratory flows and we must address the (root) causes, and this means there must be jobs and hope for the people in southeast of Mexico and Central America,” Lopez Obrador said in his daily morning press conference.
Lopez Obrador is due to speak to Harris on Friday.
Immigration has been a politically thorny subject for Biden’s administration and Harris has previously stated that she intends to visit the region as part of her plan to use diplomatic efforts to slow migration to the U.S.-Mexican border.
“In just a few days, I will meet virtually with the president of Mexico. And in a month from now. I will visit both countries,” Harris said at a conference on Monday.
(Reporting by Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)