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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2005 
Fox, Bush Pass On Immigration at Summit
 Wire services
| | U.S. President George W. Bush (C) is greeted by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin (R) and Mexican President Vicente Fox as he arrives for the opening ceremony at the Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, November 4, 2005. Anti-U.S. demonstrations at the summit turned violent as protesters set fire to a bank, looted stores, and battled riot police blocks away from a luxury hotel where U.S. President Bush met with regional leaders. (Reuters/Jim Young) |
Fox told one newspaper: "He wasn't interested and I wasn't either."
U.S. President George W. Bush has said immigration reform ranks near the top of his second-term agenda, but he and Mexican President Vicente Fox passed up an opportunity over the weekend to discuss the controversial issue at a hemispheric summit here.
The decision raised fresh questions about whether Bush will be able to push through Congress a guest-worker program that is dividing members of his own party.
"He wasn't interested and I wasn't either," Fox said in an interview published in a leading Argentine newspaper. "Why would we have a meeting just to have one? When we have important issues before us, we deal with them."
A senior Bush administration official here played down Fox's comments. "I wouldn't read too much into them," said the official, who requested anonymity as he sought to minimize the issue.
He reiterated Bush's pledge to not only bolster border security but also seek a temporary worker program that would, in the president's words, "provide for our economy's labor needs without harming American workers, and without granting amnesty, and that will relieve pressure on our borders."
Under Bush's proposal, unlawful immigrants could gain temporary legal status by paying a fine and signing up for a three-year work program, with the possibility of a three-year extension. Many employers, including large agriculture companies, hotels and restaurants, rely on foreign workers to meet their labor needs. Such guest workers would be issued identification cards. At the end of their work period, they would be expected to leave the country.
Advocates of the guestworker approach have said that it would enable U.S. agents to focus more on dangerous immigrants and help meet a need of the national economy.
But Bush's plan has met resistance from a number of Republican lawmakers, leading him to begin stressing the law enforcement aspects of his immigration policy. Some critics maintain that it amounts to an unwarranted amnesty that would attract even more unlawful immigrants to the United States. The number of illegal immigrants is estimated at between 9 million and 10 million.
Given such opposition, many immigration activists regard as slim Bush's chances of creating a guest-worker program.
White House National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, asked last week about the fact that Bush and Fox would not be meeting one-on-one while both leaders were here to attend a two-day, 34-leader Summit of the Americas at this seaside resort, replied: "There's a limited time on these things to do bilaterals, and a lot of considerations go into who you do a bilateral with and when. . . . You sort of put all of that in the mix, coming up with a decision about who you have a bilateral with or not."
Fox was initially ambivalent about the guest-worker program, but eventually agreed to back Bush's plan.
His initial hesitation reflected criticism on both sides of the border that the plan would create a permanent "underclass" of documented migrants who could be exploited and eventually expelled from the United States when their visas expired.
Fox's comments over the weekend were another reminder that the two leaders' once-warm relationship has turned unpredictable. The two men first met when Bush was governor of Texas, and Mexico was the first foreign country Bush visited as president. But relations began to cool after the Mexican president opposed the Iraq war and canceled a visit in 2002 to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, to protest the execution of a Mexican citizen convicted of murder in Texas. |
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