Put Mexico Relations Back on Front Burner

It seems hard to remember now, but the first White House state dinner of President Bush feted not Russia’s Vladimir V. Putin, Britain’s Tony Blair or Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf, all heads of state who are now vitally important U.S. allies. Rather, that first dinner was for Mexico’s President Vicente Fox. One week before the Sept. 11 attacks, 2001 was shaping up as the Year of Mexico, a time for growing common interests and new levels of cooperation. It was a partnership born of personal friendship between Bush and Fox, one that presented opportunities to tackle the toughest shared problems.

None of these opportunities has evaporated, although today they seem more distant. Since Sept. 11, the U.S.-Mexico relationship has been moved off center stage by the more critical and immediate needs of national security. But the pressing shared concerns of Mexico City and Washington dictate that relations between the two countries will merit a higher profile--indeed, Mexico is even now reemerging on the U.S. policy radar as a helpful neighbor and an ally in the United Nations, where Mexico now holds a Security Council seat.

The recent visit to Mexico of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), which focused on family, business and community ties between the U.S. and small villages south of the border, was a step toward re-energizing talks between the two countries on immigration reform and other important issues. Last week’s resumption of negotiations between the Bush administration and counterparts in Mexico moved things along. The array of policy opportunities and challenges that existed before Sept. 11 remain today. So, where are we with Mexico?

Immigration reform remains issue No.1, a policy spring from which expanded business and trade ties, law enforcement and counter-narcotics efforts, energy integration and border security will all flow. When Fox visited Washington in early September, the prospect of far-reaching immigration reform was real--perhaps not the amnesty for some 4 million Mexican citizens living illegally in the U.S. that Fox wanted, but a definite process for regularizing the flow of workers across the border and granting some kind of legal standing to people from Mexico who are already working in the U.S., paying taxes and abiding by the nation’s laws.

Such reforms remain necessary. The U.S. will face a need for workers in the future. Both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and organized labor agree on a need for increased immigration. And Mexican workers in the U.S. have earned the right to legal protections and the benefits they pay into by the contributions of their labor and tax dollars. Mexico’s families and communities need some migration certainty to end the illegal trade in people that too often ends tragically and to insure that Mexican citizens and their savings can return home at will.

If the two nations were in agreement about the need for immigration reform pre-Sept. 11, the ante has been raised in the weeks since. U.S. security needs and controlling who crosses the border into the U.S. have pushed immigration-related issues to the top of the policy to-do list. The Bush administration’s new Cabinet-level homeland defense post, headed by Tom Ridge, may seek Mexico’s help in building a North American security perimeter--a way of asking Canada and Mexico to toughen rules on who can enter those countries and assist the U.S. in keeping potential terrorists from crossing the long U.S. borders. Mexico has already helped this cause by increasing security measures along its own 750-mile southern border with Central America, thereby stopping tens of thousands of people from reaching the U.S. Mexico has also exchanged prosecutors with the U.S. for the first time to improve anti-drug and law-enforcement activities and is cooperating with the U.S. search for Al Qaeda suspects believed to have fled to Mexico. But migration reform between the two nations will, for now, focus more on border security and who can enter the U.S. rather than on how many people can come here or stay here to work.

Commerce and transportation, also high on the agenda pre-Sept. 11, are still crucial issues, and there are hopeful signs for forward movement. Throughout last summer, the debate over whether some 4.4 million Mexican trucks should be allowed to travel U.S. roads was shaping up as politically and diplomatically divisive. The North American Free Trade Agreement mandated that U.S. and Mexican delivery and freight trucks should be allowed to navigate each nation freely, but safety concerns in this country postponed implementation. Now, with the harshest spotlight elsewhere and Capitol Hill listening to the nation’s call for bipartisanship, Congress and the White House have been able to compromise and shape an agreement for Mexican trucks on U.S. roads that will allow us to fulfill our treaty obligations, answer safety concerns and apparently satisfy worried constituencies in both parties.

Up next on the policy agenda could be energy issues. Already, Mexico is one of the largest exporters of oil to the U.S., filling some 7% of our consumption needs. At a time when war involving the oil-producing Arab world might well have spiked oil prices, driven up gasoline costs and weakened the U.S. economy, Mexico continued to pump oil at normal levels and resist calls for production cuts and price hikes from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. This demonstrated the potential for solidifying U.S. energy security through partnerships with our nearest neighbors. Six months ago, at the peak of California’s energy crisis, Mexico provided electricity for 50,000 homes in the state. Fox has even suggested he might be open to the idea of a North American energy market, a dramatic departure from Mexico’s traditional approach of viewing oil as a natural treasure to be held tight--and one that is promising for U.S. energy stability.

Since taking office within weeks of one another, Bush and Fox have developed a good working rapport that reflects a more mature, accomplished U.S.-Mexico partnership. Cooperation between the two nations has receded from the spotlight since Sept. 11, but it would be a mistake to change our policy or direction. Considering some of the more discrete successes since then, policymakers should return to the conventional wisdom before our war on terrorism: Many of the problems most worrisome to the U.S.--from law enforcement to economic growth and productivity--can be most effectively addressed with Mexico’s support. But reflecting the realities of the day, the two nations should add national security and energy policy to the list, get moving on real migration reform and position themselves to pick up in the new year where they left off in September. Maybe, then, 2002 can be the Year of Mexico, with the benefits of the U.S.-Mexico agenda accruing on both sides of the border.

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Thomas F. McLarty III was President Clinton’s White House chief of staff and special envoy to the Americas. He is now vice chairman of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a strategic advisory firm in Washington and New York.