Davis Urges Freer Border Traffic

While saying security remains his top concern, Gov. Gray Davis called Monday for steps to speed commercial travel across the Mexico-California border and to help Mexican farm workers cross the border without lengthy waits.

Davis and Mexican President Vicente Fox met privately for about half an hour at Los Pinos, the president’s residence. Davis also signed a “sister state” agreement with Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther of Baja aimed at encouraging economic development, trade and tourism, as well as improving environmental quality along the border.

Davis also announced that starting in January, California will spend $1 million on a television advertising campaign to lure Mexican tourists to California.

But much of the focus was on the effect of tightened border security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. In recent weeks, there have been complaints from commercial truckers about delays. On Monday, Davis said the security procedures pose an especially pressing problem in the Imperial Valley, where the lettuce harvest is beginning but farm workers face a two-hour wait crossing into California.

“The priority is security, but still commerce must go on; crops must be harvested,” Davis said.

Davis also said that Fox told him he and the Bush administration have reopened talks about a guest worker program under which Mexicans could gain permits to work on farms and other businesses in the United States. Discussions about such a program had been put on hold after Sept. 11.

“I’m not going to criticize my country, particularly in the wake of Sept. 11,” Davis said, in response to a reporter’s question about allegations of rough treatment of migrant workers by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents at border crossings.

“But I have also said all people should be treated equally,” Davis said. “We are all God’s children. I would hope that the INS can enforce the law appropriately, in a way prescribed by their superiors, but also in a way that recognizes the dignity of all human beings.”

Davis is leading a delegation of about 30 administration officials, legislators and labor and business representatives on a trip that will conclude today, after a breakfast with Mexican and U.S. executives hosted by Citibank, one of the governor’s largest political benefactors.

Davis, who rarely wears anything other than dark blue suits and French blue shirts, added a slight variation Monday by pulling on black cowboy boots for his meeting with Fox, who is noted for favoring such footwear.

In news conferences and speeches Monday at Los Pinos, before the American Chamber of Commerce and with Mexican legislators, Davis proclaimed several times his desire to maintain a close relationship with Mexican officials.

“The border is not a barrier; it is a bond,” Davis said.

The Davis administration is proposing several steps to speed commercial truck traffic, including certifying truckers who have clean driving and criminal records and would be able to pass through “fast-track” lanes at border crossings.

In her talks with Mexican officials, Maria Contreras-Sweet, Davis’ secretary of the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, said she learned that a decade ago the federal governments of Mexico and the United States signed an agreement by which both countries would build databases of truckers with clean records.

She said, however, that the database has not been kept up to date.

Contreras-Sweet noted that the federal government must approve any effort to speed border crossings. She also said she is not sure what protections would be required to prevent drug traffickers from using the fast-track lanes.

The state also is advocating the use of X-ray technology to check cargo. Over the long term, the administration is considering helping to fund a high-speed rail line to the border at Imperial County, Contreras-Sweet said.

“We all have to be extremely cautious,” Contreras-Sweet said. “We’re hoping we can study and understand what technology can do for us.”

On another issue, Winston Hickox, head of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said he is pressing his counterparts to increase emission controls on a new power plant being built near Mexicali.

Baja Gov. Elorduy said that a plant being built by a partnership that includes Bechtel and Shell Oil will meet Mexico’s air pollution standards, but that he and the Mexican federal government are “working . . . to see if something else can be done to make it closer to California emission [standards].”

“They don’t have to, but we want to make sure we can work in harmony with our neighbors across the border in Imperial County,” Elorduy said.