López Obrador invites Díaz-Canel to the Mexican immigration summit

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador prepares for the Migration Summit in Mexico and confirmed that the Cuban ruler Miguel Diaz-Canel you're invited.

He "Meeting for a Fraternal Neighborhood and in search of Well-being", the official name of the event, will be held on Sunday, October 22 in Palenque, in the state of Chiapas, in the south of the country.

The presence of seven Latin American leaders is expected, including the Cuban Miguel Diaz-Canel, the Colombian Gustavo Petro, the Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro, the Honduran Xiomara Castro, the Guatemalan Alejandro Giammattei, the Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso and the prime minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry.

The summit occurs in the midst of an acute migration crisis in Central America, due to the increase in the illegal flow of people along routes in the region with the aim of reaching the border of Mexico and the United States.

The Mexican government also invited representatives from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama to participate in the summit.

López Obrador said that the migration problem is "worrying" in the region and suggested that Latin American states must work on the causes that generate the increase in migrants with record numbers.

"We have to address the causes, go to the bottom, not just contain or think about militarizing the borders, walls, that does not solve," he said. López Obrador this week.

Governments are called to find a common agreement to respond to the exodus from each of their countries. The negotiations will focus on a meeting that is expected to last only two hours. They will then hold a joint press conference.

The migration crisis is generating serious conflicts in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Honduras, and Nicaragua, countries that do not have enough resources to face the number of people arriving at their borders in vulnerable situations.

This crisis also especially affects the U.S. government. It has become one of the most criticized points of Joe Biden's administration because, despite implementing a group of immigration policies in January 2023, these have proven not to be enough to stop the flow of migrants.

In the current year, refugee applications in Mexico will amount to nearly 150,000. So far, most of the requests come from Cubans, Haitians and Hondurans. They represent approximately 80% of the total.