Obama is dismissing any perceptions that the country is on the “verge of collapse”.
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President Barack Obama answers questions during a joint news conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 22, 2016.
“We’re not going to make good decisions based on fears that don’t have a basis in fact”, Obama later said as he repeatedly weighed in on the race to be his successor.
“When it comes to immigration, I think Americans expect that our immigration process is orderly and it is legal”. Trump, who vowed to overturn the deal, has used it to attack presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
In a press conference on Friday, Obama spoke out against Trump’s rhetoric in the Republican National Convention, saying, the NY businessman is playing on American people’s fears that have no basis in reality.
Last month, Obama blasted Trump’s “loose talk and sloppiness”, arguing that the candidate’s call to temporarily ban Muslims from coming to the USA could lead to discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities.
Pena Nieto has said his government will work with whoever succeeds Obama in January.
“Let me start by saying something that is too often overlooked but bears repeating, especially given some of the heated rhetoric we sometimes hear”, Obama said.
“The Mexico government will be observing with great interest”, he said.
“Undoubtedly, for Mexico, it is very important for the United States to do well and for the United States to have a strong economy. The United States values tremendously our enduring partnership with Mexico and our extraordinary ties of family and friendship with the Mexican people”, Obama said while standing beside Mexico’s president.
Their convention took place “at a moment of crisis for our nation”, the nominee told Republican delegates. Many said Trump’s references to Mexican immigrants, calling them “rapists” and “killers”, has offended them.
“The problems we face now – poverty and violence at home, war and destruction overseas – will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them”, Trump said.
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But he spoke about the “unbreakable” bond between the US and Mexico, noting that many citizens of both nations live and work on both sides of the border – remarks that stood in contrast with Trump’s call to build a giant wall on the southern border. The Department of Homeland Security said that in 2015, it apprehended 406,595 people at the border – substantially fewer than the more than 876,000 apprehended during President George W. Bush’s last full year in office, and the peak of 1.7 million apprehensions in 2000 under President Bill Clinton.
