Mexico's Take On Immigration Plan

After lifetimes spent finding ways to sneak into the United States, some Mexicans are excited over a new plan by President Bush that may allow them to cross legally for work while maintaining a life in Mexico.

But many worry they will have to compete with a flood of new foreign applicants. Others, discouraged by a U.S. immigration system they believe appears set up to work against them, fear the program could be a trick to catch and deport family members already living in the United States.

Commenting on the Bush proposal Wednesday, Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez called the plan "the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end" of the debate on what to do about immigration. He said the United States needs a more concrete plan to help migrants and U.S. and Mexican officials would "work out the final details" during the Summit of the Americas meeting next week in the northern city of Monterrey.

Derbez also said Mexico won't be satisfied until U.S. immigration policy guarantees the basic human rights of undocumented Mexicans living in the U.S. with "a program that is all-encompassing."

Reacting to the Bush plan, Mexican President Vicente Fox called immigration "the fundamental theme of the bilateral relationship" between Mexico and the United States.

Fox said it is his government's ultimate goal to try to give all Mexicans living and working illegally in the United States "all the rights that any worker has in that country."

Fox has repeatedly urged Bush to legalize the millions of Mexicans who work in the United States illegally. The money they send home is this country's second-largest source of foreign income, behind oil.

Mexico has long sought a more comprehensive migration accord, but talks on the issue stalled out following the Sept. 11 terror attacks and remained more or less dead in the water until now.

Illegal crossings have become more dangerous in the past few years as smugglers try to circumvent heavy security measures.

On Wednesday, the Bush administration announced a program aimed at allowing migrants with jobs to apply for a three-year, temporary work program. Administration officials say the program will make America safer by helping document the estimated 8 million migrants now living underground in the United States.

During a visit to Mexico City on Wednesday, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he was confident the plan would be approved by Congress "because it is a security issue."

The program would allow migrants - both those in foreign countries and others living illegally in the United States - to apply for temporary work status if they already had jobs. They could come and go as they pleased, perhaps even living in Mexico but working in the United States.

To many in General Bravo, Mexico - a tiny town, an hour's drive south of the Texas border - the plan sounds like it could be good news. The only permanent residents there are those too young and too old for the trip to the United States. The rest shuttle back and forth, many paying smugglers to get them across the border in sealed trucks or through snake-infested deserts.

Wednesday, a young man sweeping General Bravo's town square - a job he does for 400 pesos a week, about $36 - was skeptical on who might be able to qualify for the Bush guest worker program.

"Don't you think it is going to be tough?" said Alejandro Chapa, 20. "Right now it is really hard to get papers."

It's hard, said Chapa, to find a job without actually traveling to the United States and usually immigration officials want you to show you have enough money to support the move.

"They ask for too much. They even ask that you have money in the bank, and poor people like us don't have anything," he said.

Many Mexicans are also wary of U.S. immigration officials, seeing them as a sure route to deportation. Many complain the requirements to get even a tourist visa to see relatives in the United States are too stringent. Some have spent years without seeing brothers or even parents.

Others simply aren't going to wait for the program, which must be approved by Congress. Chapa already has a job lined up at a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, and plans to cross illegally with three friends on Monday. The four will pay a smuggler to help them.

They dream of the day when they could simply apply for papers and cross a bridge over the Rio Grande, entering the United States legally and being protected under U.S. labor laws that are often ignored for illegal workers.

Being able to travel back and forth - a key element of the Bush plan - is something many Mexicans would welcome.

For 21-year-old Jose Guzman, the freedom of travel would mean he could earn dollars in the United States, but live in Mexico - where a U.S. minimum wage salary can buy a house, a car and many other things still out of reach for many poor Mexicans.

"I would work anywhere to be able to come home with something," he said.

Some fear the new program will prompt a flood of Mexican applicants trying to enter the United States.

Cruz Salinas, 69, said half of the young men from General Bravo are working illegally in the United States already, and the rest are trying to find a way to follow them. If the new program is approved, "all the young people here are going to want to go."

Father Esteban Ramirez, a Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, said the program would clear the way for many Mexicans to finally return home. Many migrants stay in the United States for years because they fear they won't be able to return.

Still, he feared the program would impose a lot of requirements most could not met.

"The problem is in the details," he said.

Elsewhere in Latin America, leaders expressed cautious optimism about the Bush proposal.

"We certainly support anything that leads to greater mobility for those trying to construct a better life in the United States," said Colombian vice foreign minister Camilo Reyes.

In the Dominican Republic, where an estimated 91,000 undocumented Dominicans live in the United States, a spokesman for the president said "Latin American leaders should be celebrating this proposal.

"Most Dominicans who are working in the United States illegally want to regularize their situation and live in peace," said Rafael Peralta, a spokesman for President Hipolito Mejia.

But Manuel Espinosa, a lawyer with immigration firm International Law Office Dominicana, based in Santo Domingo, worried the proposal will spur more illegal immigration.

"If you have a friend living illegally in the States and Bush comes in and makes him legal, you are going to want to go too," Espinosa said.