The ties that bind: Obama travels to Mexico (+video)

Unknowns in security

Although the two nations’ economic ties are likely to take center stage, analysts on both sides of the border say the unprecedented cooperation on security established over the past six years should continue.

“You don’t want the conversation to be dominated by one topic but you can’t ignore the situation,” says Mr. Farnsworth. 

He says Washington is going to want to know, “Is progress being made? Is the new Mexican government fully versed in the implications of security issues in Mexico? I think there is some uncertainty around what this government will do.”

Despite the shift in how the government talks about drug-related violence, in substance President Peña Nieto’s government appears to be continuing the strategy of his predecessor, Felipe Calderón. The military remains deployed in violent regions, while a new nationwide crime prevention program is largely an expansion of the one Mr. Calderón started in the border city of Ciudad Juárez in 2010. In addition, the government has announced plans to create a gendarmerie of former soldiers to patrol the countryside by the end of the year, although details of the new force's mandate and budget have so far been cloudy.

In one big shift, the Mexican government told The Associated Press on Monday that it would have all US law enforcement contact go through a "single window" of the federal Interior Ministry, which manages security – curbing the unrestricted contact of recent years between the countries' security agencies. Sergio Alcocer, Mexico's deputy foreign secretary for North American affairs, said the change would improve coordination, but some observers see the shift as a move away from the levels of direct US involvement that existed under Calderon.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico over the past six years, while another 30,000 have disappeared.

Still, “there are a lot of questions,” says Ernesto López Portillo, director of the Institute for Security and Democracy, or INSYDE. “Concretely, the public policy of Peña Nieto’s government in terms of security is still unknown.”  

Rooting for immigration reform

Mexico’s improving economy, along with sluggish growth in the US and heightened insecurity in Mexico have combined to transform historical immigration patterns. Net migration from Mexico to the US fell to zero last year, according to the Pew Research Center.

While that’s taken some of the pressure off the issue, the Mexican government remains a quiet if committed advocate for US immigration reform given that as of 2011, some 6.1 million Mexicans were living without authorization in the US, according to Pew.

But immigration is ultimately a US domestic issue and therefore it’s “taboo” for Mexico to get too involved, Schiavon says. Plus, when Peña Nieto meets with Obama, should immigration reform come up in private, he may be preaching to the choir since Obama has been urging congress to act for months.

Improving perceptions

Arturo Sarukhan, former Mexico ambassador to the US, recently described the US-Mexico relationship as one that “has never been stronger and is actually thriving.”

Now the challenge for both governments is to change how each side of the border views the other – less through the lens of drug violence and more as economic partners.

As Farnsworth says, the two presidents’ upcoming meeting could set the stage “to show [the US] in a new light to Mexico and Mexico in a new light to the US.”  

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