Mexican president says he'll propose labor program to Biden

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Saturday he will propose a ‘Bracero’ style immigrant labor program to U.S. President Joe Biden during a video call between the two leaders planned for Monday.

The Bracero program allowed Mexicans to temporarily work in the United States to fill labor shortages during World War II and afterward. López Obrador said the U.S. economy needs Mexican workers because of “their strength, their youth.”

He suggested he wants permission for 600,000 to 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants to work legally in the United States every year.

“You (Americans) are going to need Mexican and Central American workers to produce, to grow,” López Obrador said of what he plans to tell Biden. “It is better that we start putting order on migratory flows.”

Biden has proposed legislation to give legal status and a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people in the country who don’t have it.