SAN JOSE: President Barack Obama, concluding a three-day visit to Mexico and Costa Rica, is cheering Mexican economic advances and pressing other Central American leaders to deal with poverty and security while reaching out to a politically powerful Latino audience back home.
Boosted by reassuring jobs numbers, Obama is calling for greater trade and economic cooperation with the US's southern neighbors, arguing that economic prosperity is the best antidote to drug and gang violence and, by extension, to the illegal immigration the US is seeking to control.
In his radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama also made the case that deepening economic ties with the Americas means more jobs in the United States.
``One of the best ways to grow our economy is to sell more goods and services made in America to the rest of the world,'' he said. `
That includes our neighbors to the south.'' During the trip Obama has tried to modulate the exercise ofUS influence.
He has refused to insert himself in Mexico's strategy for confronting narcotrafficking, even if it means more limited access byUS security officials to Mexican law enforcement.
In Costa Rica, he urged Central American leaders to integrate their economies, reduce their high energy costs and confront the violence in the region. ``
As governments, our job is to make sure that we're doing everything we can to provide security and opportunity and ladders for success and prosperity for our people,'' he told the regional leaders at the start of a dinner Friday. ``
Economic growth that creates jobs, security for people so that they can be safe in their own neighborhoods, and development that allows people to live in dignity.''
On Saturday, Obama to speak and takes questions during a forum on economic growth and development. In addition to its economic aims, the trip served as a nod by Obama to the vast Hispanic population in the United States, which heavily supported him in the 2012 election and which retains strong family and cultural ties to Latin America. ``
In fact,'' he said Friday in a speech aimed at young people in Mexico City, ``without the strong support of Latinos, including so many Mexican Americans, I would not be standing today as president of the United States. That's the truth.''
A theme during the trip was theUS effort to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, an issue of intense interest among Latinos in the United States and in Mexico and Central America.
The vast majority of the 11 million immigrants illegally in theUS are from Latin America, 6 million of them from Mexico alone.
Obama supports legislation that would give those immigrants a path toUS citizenship and he told Univision in an interview aired Friday that he would not sign a bill that did not provide such a pathway. Republicans are demanding greater border security.
``The truth is, right now, our border with Mexico is more secure than it's been in years,'' he said in the radio address.``
We've put more boots on that border than at any time in our history, and illegal crossings are down by nearly 80 percent from their peak in 2000.''
The immigration legislation should be a compromise, he said, ``which means that nobody got everything they wanted _ including me.''
indiatimes.com
Boosted by reassuring jobs numbers, Obama is calling for greater trade and economic cooperation with the US's southern neighbors, arguing that economic prosperity is the best antidote to drug and gang violence and, by extension, to the illegal immigration the US is seeking to control.
In his radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama also made the case that deepening economic ties with the Americas means more jobs in the United States.
``One of the best ways to grow our economy is to sell more goods and services made in America to the rest of the world,'' he said. `
That includes our neighbors to the south.'' During the trip Obama has tried to modulate the exercise ofUS influence.
He has refused to insert himself in Mexico's strategy for confronting narcotrafficking, even if it means more limited access byUS security officials to Mexican law enforcement.
In Costa Rica, he urged Central American leaders to integrate their economies, reduce their high energy costs and confront the violence in the region. ``
As governments, our job is to make sure that we're doing everything we can to provide security and opportunity and ladders for success and prosperity for our people,'' he told the regional leaders at the start of a dinner Friday. ``
Economic growth that creates jobs, security for people so that they can be safe in their own neighborhoods, and development that allows people to live in dignity.''
On Saturday, Obama to speak and takes questions during a forum on economic growth and development. In addition to its economic aims, the trip served as a nod by Obama to the vast Hispanic population in the United States, which heavily supported him in the 2012 election and which retains strong family and cultural ties to Latin America. ``
In fact,'' he said Friday in a speech aimed at young people in Mexico City, ``without the strong support of Latinos, including so many Mexican Americans, I would not be standing today as president of the United States. That's the truth.''
A theme during the trip was theUS effort to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, an issue of intense interest among Latinos in the United States and in Mexico and Central America.
The vast majority of the 11 million immigrants illegally in theUS are from Latin America, 6 million of them from Mexico alone.
Obama supports legislation that would give those immigrants a path toUS citizenship and he told Univision in an interview aired Friday that he would not sign a bill that did not provide such a pathway. Republicans are demanding greater border security.
``The truth is, right now, our border with Mexico is more secure than it's been in years,'' he said in the radio address.``
We've put more boots on that border than at any time in our history, and illegal crossings are down by nearly 80 percent from their peak in 2000.''
The immigration legislation should be a compromise, he said, ``which means that nobody got everything they wanted _ including me.''
indiatimes.com
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