Mexico celebrated the opening of the land border with the United States for people who have the vaccination scheme. The decision will allow to reactivate the economy in the northern region of the country, the Mexican authorities indicated this Wednesday. The border has been closed since March 2020 for non-essential travel and its opening is stipulated for the first days of November.
“We will now have normality on our northern border”, said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador about the opening of the border that he assured is the product of the negotiations between Mexico before the United States government. “Many meetings to achieve the opening of the border, but also the decision to vaccinate in the border municipalities to facilitate the agreement”added the president.
The Foreign Minister of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, noted that this measure will allow “activate and accelerate economic growth in the northern border region of Mexico “. “It was a cause for conversation especially during the visit of Vice President Kamala Harris,” said the head of Mexican diplomacy, adding that since then a working group has been formed with Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as his counterpart.
As Ebrard indicated, both the Mexican and US governments shared information on the progress of vaccination in municipalities and border states. “The vaccination averages in Mexico, especially in the northern region but also in the rest of the country, are very high or are comparable to those in the United States”, affirmed the Mexican foreign minister. “There are even cities in Mexico that have more vaccinations than their counterparts in the United States.”added.
The head of Mexican diplomacy affirmed that Mayorkas confirmed that activities will resume from the first days of November. “Land and air travel to the United States will be allowed for people who are vaccinated. The basis of global mobility will be vaccination “, he pointed out. According to official government figures, about 67 million people of the 126 million inhabitants that Mexico has have already been immunized with at least one of the doses and 48.8 of them have the complete vaccination scheme.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the land border has been closed to non-essential travel and its reopening is one of Mexico’s repeated demands towards the United States. The closure of the northern border of Mexico had repercussions on the border communities of the two countries because both economies are strongly linked: on the one hand, Mexicans working in the United States and on the other hand, Americans traveling to Mexico to buy merchandise and medicines at lower prices.
For its part, the United States announced that the opening of its land borders with Mexico and Canada will have two phases. In the first phase, they will request vaccines for non-essential trips (tourism, family visits) while this same requirement will not be necessary for essential trips. While the second phase that they stipulate will begin at the beginning of January 2022, all travelers must have a complete vaccination scheme regardless of the reason for the trip.
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