Bush Ends Tour Optimistic On Immigration
President Bush, seeking to rebuild ties with Mexico, pledged Wednesday to intensify efforts to overhaul U.S. immigration laws and crack down on illegal drug trafficking.
Mr. Bush said that he senses there has been a change of attitudes in Congress about updating immigration laws, from skepticism last year to recognition now that changes are in U.S. interests.
"I will work with Congress, members of both political parties, to pass immigration law that will enable us to respect the rule of law — and at the same time, respect humanity," Mr. Bush said in a news conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Mr. Bush, facing a huge fight within his own party for his immigration plan, called it an important but sensitive issue.
"I say important because a good migration law will help both economies and will help the security of both countries," Mr. Bush said. "If people can come into our country, for example, on a temporary basis to work, doing jobs Americans aren't doing, they won't have to sneak across the border."
For the seventh straight day on his Latin American trip, Mr. Bush shrugged off a question about his nemesis, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Bush would not even use his name.
Ending his five-nation trip to Latin America, Mr. Bush sought to overcome rising anti-American sentiment by pledging goodwill and a fairer immigration policy.
"One of the best things America can do is help people realize their dreams," he said Wednesday morning as he met with participants in a U.S.-Mexico educational exchange program.
Mr. Bush directed his messages to the Mexican people and their newly elected president. But he was also hoping his words would be heard 1,400 miles away on Capitol Hill, where his immigration proposal has been blocked.
Mr. Bush is scheduled to return to Washington on Wednesday after his second day of meetings with Calderon.
"Our nations share a 2,000-mile border, and that should be a source of unity, not division," Mr. Bush said Tuesday. "So we're working together to keep both sides of the border open to tourism and trade, and closed to criminals and drug dealers and smugglers and terrorists and gun runners."
Just before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Bush stressed the importance of the U.S. relationship with Mexico. The war in Iraq, which Mexico did not support, and Afghanistan shifted Bush's focus to the Middle East — and Mexicans felt neglected.
Calderon acknowledged the shift in U.S. priorities, calling it "understandable" in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, but then he called on America to shift its policy back toward the south. "It is time to return and follow words of channeling our relationship towards a path of prosperity," he said.
Anti-American sentiment in Mexico rose when Mr. Bush signed a bill to install hundreds of miles of new fencing, vehicle barriers and infrared cameras along the border. A critic of U.S. immigration policy, Calderon denounced the fence with gentle but firm rhetoric.
"We do consider, in a respectful way, that we may truly stop the migration by building a kilometer of highway in Michoacan or Zacatecas than 10 kilometers of walls in the border," said Calderon, who believes that jobs in Mexico, not barriers on the border, will stem migration.
Mexicans view the fence as an insult that has aggravated already strained relations with their powerful northern neighbor. Mr. Bush worked to allay their concerns, saying the barrier and stepped-up enforcement along the border were only the first steps in a comprehensive immigration law overhaul that he hoped would include a guest worker program.
Mr. Bush's trip to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico served as a counterweight to Chavez, who is leading the leftward political shift in Latin America. Yet the president's trip also has been dogged by anti-American protests.
In Merida, about 100 protesters marched to Bush's hotel for the second night in a row carrying Mexican flags and calling Bush a "murderer."
Besides shoring up relations in Latin America, Mr. Bush's trip could help reach Hispanics, who make up the fastest-growing minority group in the United States. And it could help Mr. Bush push his immigration agenda through Congress.
Mexico, which for years has been urging changes in U.S. immigration policy, plans to begin an aggressive lobbying effort to get a deal. With the clock ticking on the Bush presidency, Mr. Bush said he hoped legislation would be completed by August.
Mr. Bush's proposed guest worker program, which Congress has not embraced, would allow Mexicans to seek temporary work visas to work in the United States.
He says his proposal would not grant automatic citizenship, but would provide a path toward that end. Some members of Mr. Bush's own party say providing a path to citizenship amounts to giving amnesty to those who have immigrated illegally.
The president says his administration is spending a lot of time trying to forge a cohesive Republican block of support on the issue in the Senate.
"If we don't have enough consensus, nothing is going to move out of the Senate," Mr. Bush said Monday in Guatemala. "And if nothing moves out of the Senate, nothing is going to happen in the House."