This is an EDITORIAL version/supplement to an analytical piece recently published… sort of like an “Altered Lyrics” version.

Obama meets with Peña Nieto: A bitter aftertaste

Building up to their meeting on May 2^nd, both U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto’s teams hinted that economic ties would be the focal point of their one-on-one. In a recent interview with Americas Quarterly’s Chris Sabatini, Obama reiterated this by stating that upon his trip to Mexico he would “be discussing with President Peña Nieto how we can continue to reduce barriers to trade and investment.”

While statements such as this one seem sterile enough and would be expected from any diplomatic visit, reading between the lines proves an unequivocal fact: effective cooperation at addressing immigration and security in a joint fashion between U.S. and Mexico has been hindered and forced to drop a few notches in the priority list of the bilateral agenda.

It comes as no surprise that the two leaders would want to play it safe, be nice and not deal with the issues that would have turned this visit into a sour one. There is just too much at stake in the countries’ economic interdependencies: Mexico is the United States’ third largest trading partner while the U.S. is Mexico’s largest trading partner. These ties have grown stronger (and Mexico’s asymmetrical dependency on the U.S. economy larger) ever since NAFTA was put into place and they pave the way towards the mutual ambition of a successful Trans-Pacific Partnership aiming completion by the end of this year.

Moreover, there would be no political gain for either Obama or Peña from their constituencies if this visit’s conclusion would have been a heated discussion of topics for which no agreement could have been reached. The divide on immigration and security is just too wide:

With regards to immigration, Barack Obama does not have the leeway to promise anything or deliver on that promise, especially at a moment where the U.S. Congress is entangled in a way too politicized debate on the issue, which will likely have a similar conclusion to the recently thwarted gun bill. Many Republicans in Capitol Hill accuse Obama of using them as scapegoats for his administration’s inability to get work done, whereas POTUS has threatened that he will veto an immigration bill which does not show a clear path towards citizenship of all illegal immigrants. For whatever the reasons, Bipartisan support for comprehensive immigration reform is just not there and Obama knows his will probably not be the last word should a bill eventually be put to vote.

On the other side of the equation, Enrique Peña Nieto has not been as vocal as his predecessors about urgency to tackle the immigration problem. Like all Mexican presidents, he has included the scripted language about defending our countrymen’s rights outside of our borders in his speeches but he has not really given any hint of committing to the work needed for an effective bilateral immigration plan to work, including hiking up enforcement of traveling with proper documentation (especially in the southern border of Mexico). And while Mexican public officials tend to steer clear of stating this fact, with remittances (mostly) from illegal immigrants amounting up to $22,400 million dollars in 2012, there is very little incentive to mess with a system that has been effective in injecting money into the country.

During their photo-op after meeting, Obama tried to center attention of his visit on the commitments made for economic development. “Too often two issues get attention: security or immigration,” he said. Unfortunately for both Mr. Obama and Mr. Peña, there is a reason for that: these issues are closer to constituents’ hearts and day to day lives in Mexico than the promise of better macroeconomic levels which may or may not trickle down to them. If you had a choice between stopping a barrage of bullets coming towards you from a U.S.-bought semi-automatic weapon in the hands of a narco and a marginal growth in national GDP, which would you choose?

Then again agreement and mutual understanding on how to deal with the security issue is not as attainable as it used to be when the PAN was in power. Peña Nieto’s administration has recently announced plans to reevaluate Calderon’s war on drugs strategy, including an intention to “restrict U.S. involvement in [Mexico’s] security efforts” and a series of actions sidelining U.S. law enforcement have already taken place, proving that this is not just nationalistic rhetoric.

While the reasons Peña states to reassess the security strategy include a focus to reduce armed violence resulting from a head-on war against the cartels, braver and bolder men than me might openly speculate about his real motives to scale down drug-trafficker prosecution. Also, the Mexican President seems more concerned with the cosmetics of his policies and how his government is portrayed in the national and international press than on the effectiveness of his strategies so on this subject, it seems a more intelligent political choice to throw a disappearing cloak over the issue and try to get the public’s attention on other quick wins which are easier to sell as success stories in order to strengthen his political party’s footing in the country.

Obama faces different domestic pressures when it comes to dealing with Mexico’s security issue, which is another way of saying that he faces none. With a much broader international agenda than Peña’s, he has a (justifiable) larger vetted interest in dealing with Syria, North Korea and domestic problems gnawing at his legacy, including the inability to reach bipartisan agreement on anything with Congress.

Simply put, as long as placing guns in hands of people who shoot each other in Mexico and send drugs up to the U.S. does not become a widespread public concern or a threat to national security, unfortunately for Mexico, Mr. Obama has bigger fish to fry and given the sequester, not a lot of oil to fry them with.

It is no coincidence that when asked about collaboration on the security issue after meeting with the Mexican President, Obama said “the nature of that cooperation will evolve” and that Mexico and the U.S. would “cooperate on a basis of mutual respect” which is definitely a step back from what he referred to as “a shared responsibility” in 2009.

So in conclusion, we can expect very little on security or immigration to be addressed jointly between the two nations during the Obama and Peña administrations and from this bilateral meeting, conform ourselves with a vague U.S.-Mexico promise of a prosperous macroeconomic future together.

And the band played on…