VALLEY / VENTURA COUNTY SPORTS

Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox’s brief visit to Los Angeles this week underscored his determination to create a new and expanded role within Mexico for the millions of Mexican immigrants in the United States.

In a meeting Thursday night with representatives of the Mexican immigrant community, Fox vowed that Mexican lawmakers will give serious consideration to two long-standing pleas from Los Angeles’ immigrants.

The first is to allow Mexican immigrants in the United States to cast absentee ballots in Mexican elections. Such a move would transform Southern California, with about 3 million Mexican immigrants, into a key electoral battleground. Whether immigrants who became U.S. citizens could still vote in Mexican elections is one of many thorny questions.

The second idea is to create congressional seats in the Mexican Congress to represent the 7 million-plus Mexican immigrants living in the United States.

Beyond the specifics, Fox stressed his desire to embrace all U.S. residents of Mexican ancestry--those born in Mexico as well as those born in the United States. This population, which official estimates put at more than 17 million nationwide, has “a key role to play in the transition to the new Mexico,” the president said.

Earlier, in a speech at a downtown hotel, Fox called for “the active participation of the entire Mexican nation, defined in the broadest sense of the word. . . . Mine will be the first Mexican administration to sincerely honor the ties that bind people of Mexican descent to the United States. I will hear the needs and respect the dreams of all those who share our Mexican heritage, here in Los Angeles and in Mexico.”

Mexican nationals have long provided key support to the Mexican economy. The stream of checks and money orders arriving from homes, banks and storefront money-transfer stations from Los Angeles to New York accounts for as much as $8 billion annually in hard currency--an amount that, in recent years, has helped force Mexico City to recognize the importance of this swelling population.

But Fox, who takes office Dec. 1, promises to take the relationship to a different level--to create “a new era in relations between Mexico and communities of Mexican origin in the United States.”

In so doing, the president-elect signaled a complete break from the attitude of disdain, condescension and even hostility that generations of Mexican leaders displayed toward countrymen and women living north of the border.

His message energized the audience of community leaders who came to greet Fox during a late-night session Thursday at the Mexican Consulate across from MacArthur Park.

“Things have completely changed: He is listening to us,” said Carlos Olamendi, an Orange County businessman who was among those at the consulate. “We have never had a situation like this before.”

Protesters who braved the cold outside the consulate were more skeptical.

Many carried banners championing various left-wing causes in Mexico, including the Zapatista rebellion in the southern state of Chiapas. It was a reminder that deep divisions remain in the Mexican population, in Mexico as well as the United States.

Fox is the standard bearer of the right-leaning National Action Party, whose election overturned the more than seven-decade domination of Mexican politics by the Institutional Revolutionary Party.

Some commentators in the United States have already dismissed Fox’s broad definition of the pan-Mexican population as quixotic and exaggerated.

While Fox says he wants to appeal to Mexican Americans as well as Mexican nationals, his critics note that most Mexican Americans are U.S.-born citizens who have little interest in events south of the border.

Many Mexican American activists say improving the lives of immigrants here is more important than focusing their attention on elections south of the border.

The president-elect seemed to be responding to such criticism when he voiced support for a new U.S. amnesty benefiting illegal immigrants not covered by earlier programs. In addition, he appeared to encourage Mexican nationals living north of the border to acquire U.S. citizenship.

“They want their children to learn English, they want to graduate from college, they want to live in integrated neighborhoods, they want to dream the American dream and wake up as citizens,” Fox said.

“I share those hopes. We have no desire to interfere in the powerful processes that tie Mexican immigrants to this country.”

During his meeting with immigrant community members, Fox listened as one spoke of the need for new projects in his home state. Another lamented the plight of low-wage workers north of the border. A third bemoaned continued violations of human rights in Mexico.

Fox not only answered respectfully, but he also went further, vowing to implement an office of immigrant affairs in Los Pinos--the Mexican White House--”so you can come and make your concerns known to me directly.” Fox, the former governor of the Mexican state of Guanajuato, said nearly one-quarter of his state’s population lives in the United States.

A second initiative under consideration, Fox said, would be the creation of an attorney general for migrant affairs, charged with preventing the frequent police shakedowns and other abuses of immigrants leaving Mexico or returning for holiday visits.

Finally, Fox vowed to improve the often costly system by which U.S. residents send remittances to family members in Mexico.

Such talk is much removed from the days when official Mexico treated immigrants in the United like deserters who foolishly abandoned their homeland and forfeited their essential Mexicanidad--literally, their Mexican-ness.

It was an attitude that weighed heavily on many Mexicans here, reinforcing the sense of exile that is common to most immigrant experiences.

Recent Mexican presidents have attempted to reach out to Mexicans and Mexican Americans abroad, expanding consular services and cracking down on the abuse of those returning home for the holidays, among other things. But Fox was clear in his ambition to go further.

The president-elect also seemed to tone down the open-borders rhetoric that has raised eyebrows in the United States. An unabashed supporter of free trade and foreign investment, Fox stressed economic solutions to the vexing problem of illegal immigration.

“If Mexico can build a strong economy, Mexico’s young men and women will stay in Mexico,” he said. “Instead of crossing the Rio Grande in search of opportunity, they will find them at home.”

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Gov. Gray Davis and Vicente Fox will meet twice a year. C1.