U.S., Mexican Governors See Meeting as Chance to Ease Tensions, Boost Commerce

U.S. and Mexican governors representing 10 states that front the international border gathered here Thursday with delicate hopes of easing a tense time in their relations.

Participants at this 14th assembly of the Border Governors Conference have a powerful incentive to forge new bonds that might take advantage of Mexico’s improving economy and the potential benefits of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

But in each of their home states, the chief executives are also pitted on opposite sides of a border standoff that has grown increasingly tense.

“I am concerned that some of these negative issues--like immigrant bashing--might cloud deliberations there,” said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project in Los Angeles. “But it seems to me that there are hopeful signs. A lot of projects have been held back by the peso crisis and seem to be coming back. . . . And this [conference] has been one of the best examples of dialogue between the two countries.”

The border conference draws U.S. governors, currently all Republicans, from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California along with counterparts from six border states in Mexico. The event has never been intended as a forum for resolving issues as seemingly intractable as drug smuggling or illegal immigration. That is left to Washington and Mexico City. In fact, this two-day gathering calls for spending more time seeking ways to expedite commerce than discussing hot-button issues.

Often, the event can even seem like a neighborhood meeting with its emphasis on establishing personal contact among the governors and, to a great extent, their staffs. The celebratory atmosphere kicked off Thursday evening with a private dinner at freshman New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson’s state mansion.

But on both sides of the border, many of the participants come to the table with strong pressures and feelings about the most controversial issues.

At the last conference, in Phoenix, the governors from Mexico insisted that the participants sign a statement affirming basic human rights. A similar statement is expected to be signed today, along with agreement on several other common issues.

California Gov. Pete Wilson comes to this conference at the center of the tension. It is his first appearance at a border governors meeting since passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot measure that he strongly supported to stop public assistance benefits for illegal immigrants.

Wilson parted with his three border-state colleagues--Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Arizona’s Fife Symington and Johnson in New Mexico--when he supported the measure, which is still blocked from implementation by the courts. As a result, he has been singled out by many authorities in Mexico as a primary source of the increasingly hard-line attitude in the United States toward illegal immigrants.

“I think this is kind of a healing meeting for Wilson,” one conference official said privately. “If I was advising him, I’d tell him to say that we are all very important to each other.”

Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh said the governor looks forward to the conference as an opportunity to talk with Mexico’s governors in a constructive forum. But he said Wilson believes that the governors from Mexico will be sympathetic to Proposition 187 because their states bear an economic burden from illegal immigrants originating in Central America.

“We go into the conference with the expectation that the Mexican governors will have an open mind,” Walsh said. “This will provide a face-to-face opportunity for the Mexican governors to understand personally from [Wilson] the real hardships illegal immigration has thrust on California.”