With elections on and Joe Biden hovering at around a 40% public approval rating, everyone can see that Joe Biden's starting to get desperate over his polls.

Vying for issue number one among voters is an out-of-control open border with illegal immigration now hitting record highs as hundreds of thousands pour in. Cities are going bankrupt with the onslaught. Border Patrol agents are shutting down legitimate trade to "process" migrants. Hospitals are flooded with diseased and injured migrants, and schools are overwhelmed with indigent pupils speaking more than a hundred languages.

Instead of change his policies to match what's written in law, Biden has sent his men down to Mexico to try to talk Mexico's anti-U.S. president, Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, into taking care of his migrant problem for him. AMLO, of course, is actually helping the migrants get in, which is a situation requiring assertiveness but there was none of that from Joe, just the image of a pleading lapdog.

According to the New York Post:

The White House sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, hoping to obtain his assistance in slowing the wave of migrants crossing through his country on their way to ours.

The resulting “Joint Communique” from that parley reveals Mexico City has no interest in assisting an administration that won’t secure US borders.

The trip itself, scheduled during a holiday week when little gets done in either capital, reeked of desperation, and nothing in that communiqué dispels the stench.

Here's the main section of the declaration that came of it:

The two countries reaffirmed their existing commitments on fostering an orderly, humane, and regular migration. This includes reinforcing our partnership to address the root causes of migration, such as poverty, inequality, and violence, and for the two countries’ initiative for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. Ongoing cooperation also includes enhanced efforts to disrupt human smuggling, trafficking, and criminal networks, and continuing the work to promote legal instead of irregular migration pathways. Also, both delegations agreed on the importance of maintaining and facilitating the vital bilateral trade at our shared border.

President López Obrador highlighted the commitment of President Biden to pursue regular, orderly, and secure migration. He stressed the need to continue the diplomatic and political engagement with all countries in the region, as well as investing in ambitious development programs throughout the entire hemisphere of the Americas. Both delegations underlined the efforts that the Biden administration is pursuing through development assistance and humanitarian aid, as well as advancing new private investments in the region.

Which is garbage, pretty much regurgitated palaver about 'root causes' from Biden's border czar, Kamala Harris and her vaunted migration report, which mean nothing. We notice that she wasn't invited to this all-important meeting for Biden. She was just there in spirit.

More specifically, it's about money, and dropping sanctions for AMLO's crummy little socialist friends running the Nicaraguan, Cuban, and Venezuelan dictatorships. AMLO saw his opportunity with Biden, recognizing how desperate he was for Mexico to stop the migrants, and decided that now was the time to get the U.S. to drop sanctions on those countries, which is what they want, and get their hands into the money pots of the big greedy gringo capitalists with so-called "investments."

The Post points out that AMLO gets $55 billion in untaxed remittance cash each year, mostly from the U.S. and its illegal migrants, and he'd like to have more of that coming. That goes doubly so for the regimes of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, which don't have much of any cash coming in except migrant remittances. Nicaragua, for one, reported record remittances this week from its illegal migrants.

It's telling that Mexico dropped the words "democratic decline" as one of its root causes of illegal migration in the official statement, apparently on its own, in the Spanish version of the document. Someone noticed, and then Joe Biden rolled again, dropping those words from the U.S. version of the statement in English as if following Mexico instead of sticking to the agreed-upon statement.

The Hill described that embarrassing rollover here.

The Mexican version, identical save for the phrase “democratic decline,” caused an uproar among the country’s opposition, which has raised red flags over López Obrador’s institutional reforms.

López Obrador has derided institutions such as the country’s independent electoral authority as “neoliberal,” “conservative” and too costly for the country, pushing reforms and budget cuts to weaken them.

To Mexico’s opposition, López Obrador’s actions are the very definition of “democratic decline.”

Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, the top foreign policy adviser to opposition presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez, accused Mexico’s government on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, of “shaving off” the term after the White House published its initial version.

But the White House reissued the English language version of the statement hours later, this time without “democratic decline.”

We might note that democratic decline is present here, too, in the migrant-receiving country, but that's not what this is about.

It's about political cover for AMLO and his dictator-y acts, and AMLO's pals, in socialist hellholes such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. They're all happy the heat's off on their increasingly oppressive dictatorships and the migrants are flowing outward.

Joe was happy to roll for them there.

Worse still, there was talk of amnesty for illegals in the document, an interesting switch for AMLO who historically has opposed illegal immigration of Mexicans to the states, viewing them as traitors to the motherland.

Now he likes that illegal immigration, which, as the Post notes, has brought him billions in remittances to play around with though the banking system. Who needs poor Mexicans to support when gringo will do it for him and the money is rolling back to him instead of the protests? Who needs potential rioters who otherwise would stand up against his own bad economic policies if they have to live in their own homeland? Migration is always a cash cow for Mexican governments and for more reasons than one.

What's bad here is that amnesty -- for DACA kids and longtime illegal migrants -- will encourage more illegal immigration, not less. After that, AMLO will stand there with his hand out again, knowing that Feckless Joe will come to him, ready to roll over again.

What an ugly disaster this meeting was, and what counterproductive things -- none good for Americans -- went on there. 

Back when President Trump was in office, the U.S. was able to stand tall and hit Mexico with the right incentives to get it to change its behavior on illegal migrants and the border, shutting down the border and warning AMLO that there would be no trade until he played ball. AMLO was able to read Trump clearly and decided it wasn't worth his while to end trade with one of his top trading partners.

Now it's different. For AMLO, it's time to shake concessions out of the feckless gringos. He knows Joe Biden won't change his policies, so now he calls the shots. What a satisfying thing is it for him to see Joe Biden rolling over for him again and again, pleading for for one last belly rub from the Mexicans.

Image: J. Wynia, via Flickr // CC BY 2.0