Press Conference by Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico on the margins of the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alicia Bárcena, today (27 Sep) told journalists in New York that Mexican migrants contribute 400 billion dollars a year to the US economy and said the US government should “seriously” consider “documenting and regularising at least those Mexicans that have been in the US for more than ten years.”

Talking to the press on the margins of the UN General Assembly’s General debate, Bárcena was asked about the situation in Venezuela.

She said, “the international community has to allow Venezuelans to take their own decisions with certain sovereignty. So that's where Mexico is, at the moment. That doesn't mean we are not interested. Of course we are interested, very interested. And we continue talking, between us, among us. But we don't believe in intervention. We are a country that has, as a policy, as a principal, non-intervention and respect for the sovereignty of other countries.”

Asked about the current spat with Spain over the non-invite of Spain’s King Felipe to president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration, Bárcena said, “what Mexico had asked for was a sort of encounter of redress,” for Mexico’s Indigenous people, for events related to the Spanish conquest 500 years ago.

She said, “we could really combine it with something very positive as well, which is this great coexistence that we have today,” noting that many Mexicans, including herself, are of Spanish descent.

The Foreign Minister said, “what we have to consider is that what the President of Mexico requested was not answered at the time. In other words, it's not a recent problem, it's a problem from before. But the Government of Spain was invited to the inauguration. Of course it was. The thing is that the President was invited, the Minister was invited, the corresponding Spanish authorities were invited.”