Posted on 10/18/2003 7:05:06 PM PDT by thefamous
Bush, Fox to discuss immigration reform
MEXICO CITY - The venue is an Asian trade meeting, but when Mexican President Vicente Fox and President Bush meet on Monday in Bangkok, Thailand, the issue will be immigration reform.
On the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Fox once again will press Bush for steps to make life easier for the millions of Mexicans who live in the United States illegally. But with the U.S. presidential election campaign in full swing, Bush is likely to be a tough sell in the wake of a California recall election that suggests that even many Hispanic voters took a dim view of deposed Gov. Gray Davis' efforts on behalf of undocumented residents.
An exit poll showed 52 percent of Hispanic voters opposed Davis' September decision to allow undocumented Mexicans to get a California driver's license. Winning candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger campaigned against the measure.
"You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not see that immigration issues decided that election," said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank in favor of tighter immigration controls. He added, "The Hispanic vote is not monolithic. I think the California experience has changed the landscape."
While Bush is likely to hear out Fox on immigration reform, his campaign advisers will remind him that Davis signed the licensing legislation thinking he would win over Mexican-American voters.
"Typically they have been identified as being Democratic voters, but that really isn't the case in California," said Roderick Ai Camp, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., and the author of numerous books on Mexican politics and culture. "Once they are here a certain amount of time, those values are transformed into something more like non-Hispanic voters. It is very much like the independent California voter."
In 2000, candidate Bush fought hard in California for the Hispanic vote and took office promising close relations with Mexico, but his agenda was redefined by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and the Washington area. Fox now would like to persuade Bush to begin discussing immigration reform again.
"We have to pick up the pace," Geronimo Gutierrez Fernandez, undersecretary for North American affairs at Mexico's foreign ministry, said in an interview.
Gutierrez said Mexico has "moderated its expectations." Mexico, which has 45 consulates throughout the United States to attend to the needs of its citizens, is lobbying state governments to officially recognize an identity card issued by Mexican consulates.
The federal government is divided. The Department of Homeland Security frowns on the cards, fearing theft and falsification, while the Department of the Treasury has endorsed the idea so banks can make it easier for Mexicans in the United States to send an estimated $10 billion to $13 billion to relatives in Mexico.
Creation of the Department of Homeland Security also has complicated relations with Mexico. What had been the U.S. Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and other agencies have been subsumed into the new department, leaving Mexico unsure of whom it should deal with.
A U.S. official involved in Mexico affairs conceded, on the condition of anonymity, that the new department still hasn't resolved issues such as the hours for returning illegal immigrants to Mexico and coordination with Mexican consulates. But the official said those issues should be close to resolution before a meeting of cabinet ministers from both countries scheduled for Nov. 12 in Washington.
Mexico also is upset about a recent pilot program to repatriate Mexicans captured in Arizona through border crossings in Texas hundreds of miles away. The United States began the pilot program with just 15 days advance notice to Mexico.
More than 6,000 Mexicans were returned under the program before it ended on Sept. 30. The Bush administration has not said whether it would be resumed, but an internal document, obtained by Knight Ridder, suggested the pilot program was a success, in part because heat-related deaths of Mexican immigrants in the scorching Arizona desert fell from 10 in September 2002 to one last month.
If you fail to read my No Trespassing signs I have posted on my property, and you don't mind being removed at the point of my gun, then sure, come on over and camp out! Mind the Wolf, he doesn't care much for stranger's. Blackbird.
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