Misadventures in the Land of Immigration Politics

With polls showing him neck and neck with Francisco Labastida, presidential candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, Vicente Fox recently brought his campaign to Mexican communities in the United States. But his rollicking plunge into binational politics was not only reckless but also potentially damaging to future U.S.-Mexico relations.

The outsized audacity that has propelled the candidate of the National Action Party into a dead heat in Mexico’s presidential race is ill-suited for the diplomacy of bilateral relations with the United States. Fox’s detour north of the border showed how he could undermine the very hopes he aroused in Mexicans living here.

In campaign stops from Chicago to California’s Central Valley, Fox pledged to seek an open border between Mexico and the U.S. within five to 10 years. At his biggest rally, he held out the prospect of an open border in only five years. But by appealing to crowds in this manner, Fox showcased his failure to grasp U.S. immigration politics. Either that or he just doesn’t care.

Immigration politics in the U.S. have plainly changed since the mid-1990s, but not enough to embrace an open border with Mexico. Rather than advancing bilateral relations, which could help his struggling compatriots living here, Fox was playing binational politics. In addition to his open-border pledge, Fox repeated his promise to extend absentee voting in Mexico’s elections to millions of Mexicans living in the United States.

In playing the binational game, Fox transplanted Mexico’s internal politics into U.S. soil for his own gain. Last year marked the official arrival of such politics, when Gov. Gray Davis and President Ernesto Zedillo swapped showy campaign-style “state visits.” When Mexican politicians come to the U.S., they enjoy the added benefit of having a substantial Mexican constituency to which to appeal. But they can sometimes forget that the mainstream U.S. media are listening to and reporting on what they say and do.

The notoriously blunt Fox didn’t disappoint. His boldness and brashness captured the U.S. media’s attention like no previous opposition figure ever had. As a result, Fox’s open-border pledge, though little more than an empty promise back home, risked inviting a political backlash against Mexico in the United States.

Following the immigration-policy wars of the ‘90s, important U.S. actors like organized labor are joining immigrants and their advocates in pushing for a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and their families. Others, including U.S. agricultural interests and the Mexican government, favor some form of temporary-labor-migration agreement. These politically ambitious ideas face strong U.S. opposition. But no group of legislators, future U.S. administration or labor union is prepared to even entertain a proposal for throwing open the border between Mexico and the United States. Indeed, the very idea is politically radioactive. Fox’s style and open-border rhetoric made him a risky visitor for California officials to associate with.

Zedillo was warmly received last year when he addressed a joint session of the California Legislature. The Fox campaign wanted the same opportunity, even hyped it as a scheduled event. But top state officials and legislators tried to avoid even courtesy meetings with the Mexican candidate. Fox did address the state Senate, but threw out his prepared remarks after his Latino hosts advised that talk of an open border was not something state legislators wanted to hear about. After a perfunctory introduction on the floor of the state Assembly, Fox beat it out of town, canceling a scheduled press conference.

As president of Mexico, Fox would likely deliver on his promise to extend the right to vote to Mexicans living in the U.S. Even Labastida has reversed position and now supports the absentee emigre vote. Five years from now, when Mexico’s next presidential race is underway, full-blown Mexican campaigns and elections may well be conducted on both sides of the border.

But Fox-style campaigning among potential Mexican voters would virtually guarantee that any significant liberalization of migration controls between Mexico and the U.S.--to say nothing of an open border--would be politically dead on arrival not only throughout a Fox term in office but for some time thereafter. Such campaigning and rhetoric, coupled with large-scale foreign voting on U.S. soil, would risk creating an image of Mexican immigration that veers far from accepted patterns of immigrant absorption and assimilation into U.S. society and politics.

In the words of Fox’s shelved Sacramento speech, Mexican politicians look “with utmost indignation” at U.S. immigration policy. What they see is enhanced border enforcement, continuous apprehension and repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans annually and their co-nationals struggling in undesirable jobs at meager wages under the cloud of undocumented status. But they should not overlook or discount the substantial volume of legal Mexican immigration to the U.S. and an immigration policy that depends upon mainstream political support.

That political support is predicated on a continuing belief in a tradition of immigration to the United States. And that tradition means an opportunity to start a new life in a country still uniquely open to newcomers. To the extent that Mexican politicians succeed in changing the U.S. public’s perception of what Mexican and other immigration is essentially about, they run the risk of critically weakening political support for more liberal immigration policies.

Both Mexican and Californian politicians are new to the game of binational politics. They need to think long and hard about both the substance and appearance of playing it responsibly and effectively. In so doing, they would do well to reflect upon Fox’s bull run through the china shop of U.S. immigration policy and politics. He didn’t bust the place up, but he came alarmingly close. *