Expressing solidarity with India, Mexico on Thursday said that the economic policies of the current U.S. administration are “unviable”. Manuel Cavazos Lerma, a senior lawmaker from Mexico said that a continued curtailment of the H-1B visa scheme by the Trump administration would ensure devastation of the American IT sector.
“According to various studies, almost 60% of the IT professionals in the Silicon Valley are from India. So a crackdown on H-1B visas by the Trump administration will ensure devastation of the IT industry of the United States,” said Senator Lerma.
Senator Lerma who is part of a delegation of Mexican parliamentarians visiting India said that the Trump administration has begun by giving the impression that it will disrupt the rules of global engagement on trade, immigration and technological exchange. However, such a swift disengagement, he said, may not be possible immediately as the U.S. Congress is likely to veto President Trump’s extreme measures.
In the volatile post-Trump atmosphere, Mexico is therefore keen to firm up ties with other countries like India, Australia, Japan, China and New Zealand. “We have both multilateral talks with these countries under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) as well as robust bilateral talks with them,” Senator Lerma said emphasising that Mexico and India have common concerns in ensuring free trade and free movement of people.
Senator Lerma said that the welfare of the immigrants in the United States is a common concern for both Mexico and India. To make the point, he said that Mexico gets 27,000 million USD annually from the United States as remittances that are at risk due to President Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.
“As a remittances earning country, India too has to be concerned about what happens to all immigrants in the U.S. as President Trump also wants to target those Indian immigrants who are staying in the U.S. illegally,” he said highlighting that the ban on the visa ban on seven Muslim countries is unfair.
“Some of the best scientific talents in the U.S. came from the Islamic countries,” he said.
Senator Lerma who is a member of the foreign relations committee of the Mexican Senate said that both countries will work more robustly in multilateral platforms. But stopped short of supporting India’s permanent candidature at the U.N. Security Council. “The Security Council has been a difficult platform to reform from the beginning of the United Nations and it needs some more discussion before it is reformed,” he said.
