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Obama travels to Mexico, Costa Rica

02 May 2013 20:49 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday kicked off a three-day visit to Mexico and Costa Rica, with focus expected to be on trade, energy, security, as well as immigration issues, APA reports quoting US Media.

Talking about his upcoming trip to Mexico at a White House press conference on Tuesday, Obama said "A lot of the focus is going to be on economics."

"We've spent so much time on security issues between the United States and Mexico that sometimes I think we forget this is a massive trading partner, responsible for huge amounts of commerce and huge numbers of jobs on both sides of the border," he said.

"We want to see how we can deepen that, how we can improve that and maintain that economic dialogue over a long period of time," he added.

Mexico, as a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which also includes Canada and the United States, is the U.S. second largest export market and the third largest trading partner.

Trade between the two countries, which share a 2,000-mile ( about 3,219 kilometers) border, is worth 500 billion dollars a year. Mexico is also a major source of undocumented immigrants as well as drugs to its northern neighbor.

"Mexico is an important partner in immigration reform given that we work with them every day to secure our border," said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, while briefing reporters on Wednesday.

Obama has been pushing for a comprehensive reform on immigration, with the centerpiece being offering some 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States a path to citizenship.

During his first trip to Costa Rica and his sixth to the Latin American region as president, Obama will meet his Costa Rican counterpart Laura Chinchilla, and then attend a summit with leaders of Central American nations, with focus on security, immigration and economic issues.

Washington is helping Mexico and the Central American nations to combat drug trafficking and other organized crimes under the so- called Merida Initiative signed by former U.S. President George W. Bush, Obama's predecessor, and has put in 1.9 billion U.S. dollars since its inception in 2008.