At a brief photo opportunity with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington D.C. last week, Mexican Foreign Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu hailed the “shared vision” of the bilateral relationship and “the need for us to keep on working together to make our region more prosperous, inclusive, and secure.”
But speaking later at a Migration Policy Institute event, Ruiz Massieu, making her first official visit to the United States as foreign minister, deviated slightly from diplomatic convention. Urging the United States to “embrace migration as an opportunity,” she called on Americans to “unmask the stereotypes of international migrants” and not view them as “security concerns.”
Ruiz Massieu said she would like a greater focus placed on the positive contributions that immigrants make in their new countries; for example, the billions of dollars that undocumented immigrants pay in taxes each year.