Enrique Pena Nieto said he’s not building Donald Trump’s wall between it and the United States. The Mexican president shot down the White House hopeful’s promise to make his country pay for the wall.
During an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Peña Nieto stressed that economic and social prosperity on both sides of the border relies on a firm relationship between Mexico and the United States.
“We also have to bear in mind that the security of the United States is linked with the security of its neighboring countries,” he told CNN. “And this is what we have built. And I’ll say it again, this is what we have been doing with the U.S. government. We have a relationship of coordination, of collaboration and of cooperation in the area of security, precisely in order to have security in Mexico, to have security in the U.S. and … we are journey companions. We are strategic partners working for security in North America.” He added: “There is no way that Mexico can pay [for] a wall like that.”
In New York in June 2015, while announcing his run for president, Trump announced his candidacy for president in June 2015 by raising concerns across the border. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
But Peña Nieto fired back when this statement was brought to his attention. “I cannot agree with such a generalization for Mexicans,” he said. “There is no way to agree with comments like these which describe all Mexicans in such a way.” The leader said there are criminals in every country and “we need to fight and apply the full extent of the law” in bringing those people to justice.
“Not many people know, for instance, that every single day, 1 million people cross the border between Mexico and the U.S. and they do it legally — every single day — one million people cross the border from the U.S. into Mexico and from Mexico into the U.S.,” the President said.
The Pew Research Center published a fact sheet after they found that Mexican migration to the United States has slowly dramatically. The research also shows that more Mexicans left than came to the United States since the end of the Great Recession. Between 2009 and 2014, 870,000 Mexican nationals left Mexico to come to America, down from the 2.9 million who left Mexico between 1995 and 2000.
