Cubans and Yankees: The End of Anti-Imperialism and Anti-Communism

La Jornada (Translated by WorldMeets.Us): It's already commonplace to say that the meeting between Barack Obama and Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas in Panama is a milestone. It is of course, and it will have implications for the entire continent as it changes the nature of relations between Latin America and the United States - giving a new tone. It is time to bury the last shovelful of Cold War dirt and the highfalutin rhetoric that came with it.

If relations between the two countries continue to progress, there are two ghosts that seem destined to their graves, even if of course we continue to hear their echoes: anti-imperialism and anti-communism. The far-right Tea Party in the United States and the champions of 21st century socialism will beat these ghosts as long as the racket brings them political gain. Read more. 

'Flying in Face of History,' Texas Again Frustrates Undocumented

La Jornada (Translated by World Meets): Texas is again at the forefront in terms of measures taken against undocumented migrants. This time a federal judge in the state backed a Texas government challenge of executive orders issued by President Obama. The preliminary injunction suspends the orders, which would allow more than five million undocumented immigrants to live and work in the country.

Last week was just the latest ignominious episode restricting the rights of millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States to live as individuals. The person responsible for that misfortune is Federal Judge Andrew Hanen, who has lived in Texas his entire life and was nominated by George W. Bush. Twenty six other states in which 2.3 million undocumented residents live have initiated similar procedures for constraining the provisions of the president. Read more.

Harper postpones Three Amigos summit amid chilly relations with U.S. and Mexico

The Globe And Mail: Prime Minister Stephen Harper has postponed the North American leaders’ summit with U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto at a time when relations with both leaders are chilly.

The unexpected move allows Mr. Harper to avoid an awkward side-by-side news conference with Mr. Obama at a February summit that all three governments were expecting would be dominated by the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline – now at the top of the political agenda in Washington. Read more. 

Federal Judge Rules Obama Immigration Measures Unconstitutional

Latin American Herald Tribune:  A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday ruled unconstitutional President Barack Obama’s recent executive action to temporarily protect from deportation more than five million undocumented foreigners, the decision coming as part of a court decision on the case of a Honduran immigrant charged with DUI.

Judge Arthur Schwab, appointed to the bench by former Republican President George W. Bush, justified his ruling on the legality of the presidential decree because the accused in the DUI case, 42-year-old Elionardo Juarez-Escobar, could – in his judgment – benefit from Obama’s executive action.  Read more.

Undocumented Cannot Count on Obama's Migration Initiative (La Jornada, Mexico)

WorldMeetsUS: President of the United States Barack Obama yesterday announced the adoption of a regularization plan to grant five to eleven million undocumented migrants living in the country legal status for the next two years. To take advantage of the change in requirements one must demonstrate having been in the United States for five years, the existence of children or dependent permanent residents in the U.S., with potential beneficiaries subject to a criminal background check. In the short term, the measure could halt the deportations of about 4 million people. Read more.

US State Department Urges Mexico "To Stay Calm"

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2014/11/234039.htm

Note: No one in the Obama cabinet, including Obama, has said anything about the Ayotzinapa case that I have seen. Only spokespersons. It's a topic they would like to go away--after all they have a lot riding on the Peña reforms and Peña has been a darling of the U.S. government. Now they have asked us to stay calm during the judicial process--as if there were a judicial process and as if 43 young men were not still forcibly disappeared. What did Shannon talk to Wayne about and what did Obama presumably talk to Peña Nieto about in China? That we will never know, but it surely went beyond patronizing platitudes to stay calm.


QUESTION: Jen, you were concerned about Mexico yesterday, and a couple of questions: Has the U.S. offered – or Mexico requested – any help in addressing the disappearance of the 43 students?

MS. PSAKI: Well, let me just – since you gave me the opportunity, let me just reiterate that we extend our deepest sympathy to the family and friends of the victims. The heinous and barbaric crime must be thoroughly and transparently investigated and those responsible be brought to justice without delay and punishment – without delay and punished, sorry – consistent with due process and respect for the rule of law. We urge all parties to remain calm through the process.
I’m not aware of any specific requests from the Mexican Government for U.S. assistance. I can certainly check with our team and see if anything has changed on that front since yesterday.

QUESTION: Please. Also, the – is there a concern by the U.S. Government – I know that Mr. Shannon met with Ambassador Wayne this morning. Is there any concern about the stability of the Mexican Government, given the violence, the lack of confidence on state and federal government, that maybe Mexico is sliding towards a failed state situation?

MS. PSAKI: I don’t believe that’s a concern we’ve expressed. Obviously, we’re concerned about tensions on the ground. That’s why we’re continuing to urge all parties to remain calm through the process, and obviously why we’re engaged, also, closely with officials there. We have recently put out a new travel advisory to U.S. citizens who are living there, and, obviously, we continue to provide them updated information.

Daughter of farm workers nominated

Mexico News Daily: The daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers has been nominated the next American ambassador to Mexico.

Maria Echaveste, 60, is President Barack Obama’s choice to replace Anthony Wayne, who leaves the post this month after three years. Read more.

'Not Since Slavery' Has U.S. Treated People Worse than Undocumented (La Jornada, Mexico)

La Jornada – Original Article (Spanish)
Translated By Florizul Acosta Perez
WorldMeets.US
June 9, 2014

According to Princeton University Professor Douglas Massey, the millions of undocumented migrants living in the United States with no respect for their civil, social or political liberties, constitute the largest population living under such conditions since the formal end of slavery in the neighboring country, in 1863.

The comparison is a painful one, but an accurate one to characterize the abuse and mistreatment our brothers and sisters are subjected to every day in the neighboring country, and in general, foreign nationals who reside there without the corresponding immigration documents.

Indeed, migration is a phenomenon as old as our species and inherent to human societies, but in the 21st century, the phenomenon is driven by poverty, lack of employment, and an absence of social mobility or positive horizons in countries like ours, where one can throw in police brutality, which is not at all ameliorated by guarantees of individual or human rights, and is dedicated to criminalizing and persecuting people who are overwhelmingly innocents.

More Deportations Follow Minor Crimes, Records Show

NY Times
By Ginger Thompson and Sarah Cohen
April 6, 2014

With the Obama administration deporting illegal immigrants at a record pace, the president has said the government is going after “criminals, gang bangers, people who are hurting the community, not after students, not after folks who are here just because they’re trying to figure out how to feed their families.”

But a New York Times analysis of internal government records shows that since President Obama took office, two-thirds of the nearly two million deportation cases involve people who had committed minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all. Twenty percent — or about 394,000 — of the cases involved people convicted of serious crimes, including drug-related offenses, the records show. Read more. 

At Vatican, Obama's Immigration Hypocrisy Shines Through (La Jornada, Mexico)

La Jornada – Original Article (Spanish)

Translated By Acosta-Florizul Perez for WorldMeetUs

April 1, 2014

In the meeting last week at the Vatican between U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis, the two heads of state addressed the issue of our northern neighbor's immigration policy, issuing a call to "eradicate the trafficking of human beings around the world," to work so that "international and humanitarian law is respected within conflict zones," and to seek "negotiated solutions."

Bearing in mind the upsurge in persecutions of undocumented immigrants and the consequent violations of human rights during Obama’s terms in office, such declarations constitute an act of hypocrisy on his part. It must be remembered that the current U.S. president has not only shown a reluctance to abandon his country's traditional policies of persecution and violations of human rights regarding immigration, but he has continuously intensified them. Proof of this is the fact that his government has deported more than two million undocumented immigrants, nearly 140,000 this year alone, the highest figure on record, behind which are so many untold stories of personal and family suffering.  Read more.

Human Rights, the NSA, and U.S. Moral Decline (La Jornada, Mexico)

La Jornada 
Translated By Douglas Myles Rasmussen
WorldMeets
October 31, 2013

In the context of the opening of its regular sessions, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) demanded yesterday, in the midst of scandal over the massive and systematic espionage practiced by Washington against citizens and governments, that the United States apply mechanisms to regulate the surveillance of communications so as not to infringe on human rights.

Felipe González, commissioner of the hemisphere-wide group, said that the Commission must advance toward a mechanism that, assuming the legitimacy of the security efforts of states, is not invasive of the rights of individuals. Meanwhile, his counterpart Rodrigo Escobar, stressed that the powers of the United States on security matters must not be absolute, and that the neighboring country must be subject to certain limits, rules and procedures.  Read more. 

NYC implements program that teaches how to avoid deportation

HuffPost Voces
By Claudia Torrens
Original Americas Program Translation

New York (AP) - New York will spend municipal funds to enable young immigrants without permission to live in the U.S. to petition the government for suspension of deportation orders and obtain a work permit.

New York officials announced on Wednesday that it would spend $ 18 million in adult education programs and legal assistance to help "dreamers" secure local entitlement to deferred action that President Barack Obama signed last year. The "dreamers" are young people who were brought illegally to the United States, usually by their parents as children.

New York is the first city in the country implementing the initiative, officials said.

An estimated 79,000 undocumented youth in New York City can still qualify for the Obama plan but 16,000 of them must register in a school or adult education program, as stipulated in the federal requirements. Because adult education programs in the city are full and private education is expensive, the city will use the money announced Wednesday to create 10,370 new opportunities for students in adult education programs.

Democratic Revolt Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Fast Track

The Americas MexicoBlog and Americas Updater has been following TPP negotiations, what it means for Latin America and anti-TPP organizing closely, after twenty years of looking at the disastrous results of NAFTA. This is encouraging news, sent by the Citizens Trade Campaign. Obama's nominee for US Trade Representative, Michael Froman--a typical product of the revolving door between private companies and the government agencies charged with overseeing them for the public good--is a former investment manager at Citigroup and has been accused of tax avoidance. 

No doubt about it, the 2008 candidate Obama who promised to renegotiate NAFTA and design trade deals to promote decent jobs and relief for small businesses has vanished into thin air. Now it's up to citizen, labor and environmental groups to find allies in and  outside Congress to stop the spread of these job-killing Free Trade Agreements. And it looks like they're making some headway. But one of the big problems we have as progressive policy analysts, is finding out what is in the TPP. Government negotiaters not only think they can deal away our interests, but they think they can do it while keeping us uninformed and silenced. If anyone has any new inside information on the negotiations and the current draft, please send it on. info@cipamericas.org

Over Two-Thirds of Democratic House Freshmen Tell Party Leadership They Oppose Transferring Their Constitutional Trade Authority to the President

Washington, DC — More than two-thirds of Democratic freshmen in the U.S. House of Representatives expressed serious reservations today about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) negotiations and the prospect of delegating Fast Track "trade promotion authority" to the President.  They voiced their concerns in a letter sent to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Ranking Ways and Means Member Sander Levin that was spearheaded by Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan and signed by 35 other House freshmen.  

"The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems," the letter reads.  "Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress's exclusive Constitutional trade authority to the president."

The TPP is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in U.S. history.  The twelve countries currently involved — the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — already cover approximately 40% of the global economy, and the TPP also includes a "docking mechanism" that could enable other countries to join over time.  The TPP's seventeenth major round of negotiations concluded in Lima, Peru last month, and negotiators are racing to complete their work by an October deadline set by President Barack Obama and others.  

Under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress possesses exclusive authority to determine the terms of international trade agreements, but the Obama administration wants Congress to transfer that authority to the executive through a new delegation of Fast Track "trade promotion authority."  The President's nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, reiterated that request during his Senate confirmation hearing last Thursday.  

Fast Track delegates Congress' constitutional trade authority to the executive branch, allowing negotiators to determine the contents of trade agreement and to sign them before Congress has a vote on the matter.  The rarely-used procedure also allows trade agreements to circumvent ordinary Congressional review, with the White House writing lengthy implementing legislation that is not amendable in committee or on the floor and must be voted on within 90 days of submission, leaving Congress with only take-it-or-leave-it approval of a completed package that, in the case of the TPP, is expected to be at least hundreds of pages long and cover some 29 separate chapters, affecting everything from food safety standards and medicine patents to energy regulations and public procurement decisions.  

"It's encouraging that so many new Members of Congress recognize the problems inherent with Fast Track, and are demanding a more meaningful role in trade policymaking for themselves and their constituents," said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign.  "Congressman Pocan and these other freshmen have demonstrated a real commitment to creating fair trade agreements that promote job creation and economic prosperity.  That type of leadership is desperately needed if we're going to stop letting big corporations ship our jobs overseas and dump our wages and benefits overboard along the way."

A copy of the letter and its signatories follows:

The Honorable Sander M. Levin

Ranking Member

Ways and Means Committee

1106 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Cc: The Honorable Nancy Pelosi

Dear Ranking Member Levin:

We look forward to working with you to establish United States trade policies that promote the creation of American jobs and support our national economic interests while safeguarding Congress’s prerogatives to determine what domestic policies best promote the public interest.

As the economy continues to recover from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, we can all agree that we cannot afford to have American production and American jobs sent offshore because of unfair trade agreements that undermine our economic growth. When jobs and production factories are offshored, American wages are lost, American-made products decline, and our international interests are compromised.

Job offshoring was a major issue in the previous election that unites our constituents - Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. Polling consistently shows that Americans oppose our past model of “trade” agreements that facilitate offshoring, undermine Buy American policies, and subject American laws to review by foreign tribunals empowered to order payment of unlimited U.S. tax dollars to foreign firms that seek to avoid playing by the same rules as U.S. firms.

Thus, we write with serious concerns about both the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) now being negotiated by the Obama administration and the prospect of Congress delegating wide swaths of its Constitutional authority to regulate trade (Article 1, Section 8) to the president through “Fast Track”  or any other open-ended delegation of “trade promotion” authority.

In the last Congress, two-thirds of House Democrats joined together on a letter to President Obama demanding access to the draft TPP FTA texts and raising concerns about how the pact could internationally preempt Congress’s domestic policymaking prerogatives. They wrote:

“Since the United States will be obliged to bring existing and future U.S. policies into compliance with the norms established in the TPP FTA, the negotiations USTR is pursuing will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas. These could include those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.”

Unfortunately, today TPP FTA talks continue in extreme secrecy. The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems. Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress’s exclusive constitutional trade authority to the president.

Congress needs to work together to get American trade policy back on track - not give away its authority to do so.  Reducing our authority to ensure our trade agreements serve the public interest will undermine our efforts to create American jobs and to reform a misguided trade policy that has devastated our manufacturing base through the offshoring of American production and American jobs.

Indeed, given the vast scope of today’s “trade” agreements, we do not believe that a broad delegation of Congress’s constitutional trade authority is generally appropriate. Negotiations on the TPP FTA delve deeply into many non-trade matters under the authority of Congress and state legislatures. If completed, the TPP FTA would lock in policies on these non-trade matters that could not be altered without consent of all other signatory countries. Thus, ensuring Congress has a robust role in the formative aspects of trade agreements is vital.

We are all deeply committed to creating jobs in our communities and across the country. To do so effectively, we believe it is critical that Congress maintains its authority to ensure American trade agreements are a good deal for the American people.

Sincerely,

U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (WI-02), Ron Barber (AZ-02), Joyce Beatty (OH-03), Ami Bera (CA-07), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Tony Cardenas (CA-29), Matthew A. Cartwright (PA-17), William L. Enyart (IL-12), Bill Foster (IL-11), Lois Frankel (FL-22), Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02), Pete P. Gallego (TX-23), Joe Garcia (FL-26), Alan Grayson (FL-09), Steven A. Horsford (NV-04), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Hakeem S. Jeffries (NY-08), Joseph Kennedy, III (MA-04), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Annie McLane Kuster (NH-02), Alan S. Lowenthal (CA-47), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01), Daniel B. Maffei (NY-24), Patrick Murphy (FL-18), Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA-35) , Richard M. Nolan (MN-08), Beto O’Rourke (TX-16), Donald M. Payne Jr. (NJ-10), Raul Ruiz (CA-36), Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09), Eric Swalwell (CA-15), Mark Takano (CA-41), Dina Titus (NV-01), Juan Vargas (CA-51), and Marc A. Veasey (TX-33)

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Arthur Stamoulis

Citizens Trade Campaign

(202) 494-8826

Mexico 'remaking' itself, Obama tells students

Los Angeles Times 
By Kathleen Hennessey and Tracy Wilkinson
May 3, 2013

Mexico City -- President Obama painted a sunny picture of a modern, “emerging” Mexico in a speech before an audience of young people Friday, his second day of a three-day swing through Latin America.

Speaking at the National Museum of Anthropology, the president expressed optimism about the push for reforms led by the new administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto and called on young people to be persistent.

“You honor your heritage, thousands of years old, but you are also part of something new, a nation that’s in the process of remaking itself,” Obama said, speaking in a central courtyard of the iconic museum with Mexican and American flags hanging behind him. “And as our modern world changes around us, it is the spirit of young people, your optimism and idealism, that will drive the world forward.”

The president’s message of a rising Mexico serves both his and his counterpart’s domestic agendas. Obama is pushing for immigration reform, and is seeking to reassure skeptics at home that the root causes of illegal immigration – poverty, violence and corrupt institutions in Mexico – are easing under new leadership.  Read more. 

Guns, Drugs and Money Laundering: What Does Obama Want from Mexico? (El Universal, Mexico)

"While here we bury the dead of this war, there they are providing the places and conditions for marijuana consumption. Nor is there any evidence that political forces in the United States are willing to halt the free sale of weapons, nor is there any indication that a serious crusade against money laundering is in the offing. Is President Obama willing to engage in discussions vital to eliminating the root causes of drug trafficking, or will he simply tell us that in our bilateral relations, we are subordinate to them?"

Editorial
El Universal
Translated By Miguel Gutierrez
 May 2, 2013

Today the president of the United States, Barack Obama, arrives in the country for a working visit. He will hold high-level talks with President Enrique Peña Nieto on the bilateral agenda, which, as the Mexican government has insisted on in recent weeks, will not be limited to security issues.


In Mexico, but also in some influential sectors of our neighboring country, agenda items considered subordinate to security must regain their importance: investment, trade, migration, geopolitical collaboration, and diplomacy. All the forgotten issues that remain relevant on both sides of the border.  Read more. 

Advocates for Press Freedoms Take Action for Slain US Reporter Brad Will

For Immediate Release

(Houston, May 1) Advocates for press freedom and human rights are pressuring President Obama to remember murdered US journalist, Brad Will, who was slain in broad daylight by Mexican government-backed paramilitaries over six years ago. They issued an 'Action Alert' today, for people who shared their concern with the impunity with which the murder of a US journalist has been greeted in Mexico, to contact senior Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont. The alert urged Senator Leahy to ask the President, on his trip to Mexico this week, to "raise to Mexican President Nieto publicly the lack of sound prosecution of the shooters who murdered Brad Will and . . .(to) insist that accountability for his murder, and the murder of other journalists, mostly Mexican, who had, before they were killed, been publishing stories of corruption and brutality by top Mexican government officials, be achieved promptly".

Senator Leahy was instrumental in inserting a requirement for an investigation into Brad Will's murder in earlier appropriations for Plan Mexico, a militarization package that has poured guns and other lethal aid into the Mexican military and police, forces that are widely seen as unaccountable, corrupt and which systematically abuse human rights. The resulting violence has contributed to the estimated 100,000 murders of civilians many of whom were innocent bystanders uninvolved in the drug trade.

As the Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, Senator Leahy has the power to influence President Obama's discussions with President Nieto of Mexico, a major recipient of US military aid.

Brad Will was murdered in broad daylight over six years ago. There were many witnesses. Mexican government officials, at least four of them, were identified as the shooters. Yet only two were questioned by the Mexican prosecutor's office and both let go without charge.

Over 100 Groups Call on Obama & Mesoamerican Leaders to Tackle Root Causes of Violence at SICA

By CIP Americas with several others and signed by more than 145 organizations

Dear Honorable:

President Barack Obama

President Enrique Peña Nieto

President Laura Chinchilla

President Otto Pérez Molina

President Porfirio Lobo

President Mauricio Funes

President Daniel Ortega

President Ricardo Martinelli

Attorney General & Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington

April 30, 2013

We, the undersigned civil society organizations from throughout the region, are writing to you on the eve of your meetings in Mexico and at the Summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA) in Costa Rica.We welcome the opportunity for our nations to discuss cooperation on critical cross-border issues and urge our States to address our concerns about the dire human rights crisis in Mesoamerica.

Our organizations have documented an alarming increase in violence and human rights violations. While we recognize that transnational crime and drug trafficking play a role in this violence, we call on our governments to acknowledge that failed security policies that have militarized citizen security have only exacerbated the problem, and are directly contributing to increased human suffering in the region.

It is time to refocus regional dialogue and resource investment to address the root causes of violence,

understanding that for many citizens and communities, drug trafficking is not the principal cause of insecurity. Harmful “development” policies have similarly caused increased conflict and abuses, while forced migration and criminalization of migrants and human rights activists continues to divide families. Most importantly, the region’s challenges must be addressed without violating fundamental rights and human dignity.

US President Obama to discuss trade in Mexico

BBC
May 2, 2013

US President Barack Obama is travelling to Mexico on Thursday for talks expected to focus on bilateral trade.

Mexico is the third largest trade partner of the US and the president has said he is keen to discuss job creation on both sides of the border with his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto.

President Obama's planned immigration reform is also likely to feature high on the agenda.

During the three-day trip the president will also visit Costa Rica.

Policy shift

US National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said strong economic ties between Mexico and the US had been overshadowed by a focus on security in the past, but that Thursday's trip would attempt to redress the balance.

That sentiment was echoed by Sergio Alcocer, Mexico's Deputy Foreign Minister for North America, who said the two presidents would discuss "the benefits and the need to re-balance and diversify the relationship" between Mexico and the US.

It will be the second meeting between the US leader and Mr Pena Nieto, who was invited to the White House even before he was sworn in on 1 December 2012.  Read more. 

The Mexico Bubble

Foreign Policy 
By John Ackerman

When U.S. President Barack Obama travels to Mexico this Thursday for his first summit with new President Enrique Peña Nieto, he's going to hear a lot about the country's uptick in international portfolio investment, its recent discovery of vast new petroleum reserves, and its new political grand bargain, called the "Pact for Mexico," in which the leaders of the three largest political parties have gone behind closed doors to hammer out deals on tax, education, energy, banking and telecom reform, among other areas.

But instead of giving priority to the interests of Wall Street and of Mexico's discredited political class, Obama should turn his gaze to Main Street and listen to the voices of the Mexican people on both sides of the Rio Grande. Otherwise, he risks committing the United States to a highly risky political game run by Latin American cronies that could soon end in disaster, with an impact that could be felt across North America. Read more. 

U.S., Mexico to talk trade barriers during Obama visit

Special for USA TODAY
By David Agren
May 1, 2013

MEXICO CITY — Delivery trucks from Mexico line up early in the morning at the border crossing in Tijuana, where 20 million flat-screen TVs were manufactured last year.

Traffic studies found cargo trucks, even empty ones, wait 90 minutes on average to cross into the USA as U.S. Customs agents check vehicles for contraband, and then spend at least an hour waiting to get back into Tijuana.

"Trucks that are a critical element of a competitive supply chain may spend three to four hours waiting in line during a day," says Kenn Morris, president of the Crossborder Group, a San Diego consultancy, which commissioned the traffic studies. "These kinds of delays are both too typical and really strangle border economies … and put more barriers between what should be two strong economic partners."

Improving on the way goods flow from Mexico to the USA is what President Enrique Peña Nieto intends to emphasize Thursday when President Obama visits Mexico City.  Read more.