Fox Hails Gains in Talks With Bush

President Vicente Fox said Saturday that he has won a pledge from President Bush to work toward legalizing some of the millions of Mexicans employed illegally in the United States.

Speaking on his weekly radio program, Fox expressed delight with the two leaders’ meeting Friday, saying it opened a path to increased cooperation on issues ranging from migration to drug trafficking and energy.

Disclosing the first details of the migration talks, the Mexican president said: “The commitment of President Bush and our commitment are to seek that all those Mexicans who are there without documents or illegally be considered legal workers.”

That would mean the workers could receive Social Security and other benefits and could travel to and from Mexico freely, not sneak across the border.

“I believe this is marvelous. Never has a possibility like this been spoken of before,” Fox said.

Mexican media, however, criticized Bush for undermining the meeting at Fox’s ranch in Guanajuato state by sending U.S. warplanes to bomb Iraqi air defense sites on the same day and thus stealing the summit’s thunder.

“Iraq embitters Fox’s fiesta,” said the headline in the Reforma daily.

Fox played down the timing and declined to comment on the bombing, but Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, one of two interviewers on Saturday’s hourlong radio program, criticized the Americans for failing to inform Fox that the news was about to break. Fuentes added: “In such a close relationship, there should have been information on events as momentous as the bombardment of Iraq. . . . There shouldn’t be surprises.”

Fox said he and Bush had agreed to meet every six months to discuss the multitude of thorny problems the two countries share, including migration, drug trafficking and trade.

The Mexican president also said he expects the U.S. policy of unilateral certification of Mexico’s commitment to fight the drug trade to be replaced by a new, joint approach involving cooperation at the highest level.

In the past, U.S.-Mexican efforts to stop traffickers have been constrained by American suspicions of corruption in Mexican law enforcement agencies. Bush said Friday that he trusted Fox’s determination to go after the drug cartels.

On Saturday, Fox disclosed that he and Bush had agreed that the two nations will form a joint team to oversee the fight against drugs. He said U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and Mexican National Security Advisor Adolfo Aguilar Zinser will oversee this cross-border initiative and devise mutual, measurable objectives to be reviewed twice yearly.

Fox said he welcomed Bush’s recognition during a joint news conference Friday that U.S. consumption feeds the drug cartels and corruption in Mexico.

“This acknowledgment is the first in history from a president of that country,” Fox said.

A senior Mexican official said the two presidents also dealt in detail with their energy and water problems and broached ideas for joint solutions that could benefit California.

The official said, for example, that Fox agreed to try to quadruple by December the supply of electricity from Baja California sold to California. If technical obstacles can be overcome, that would raise electricity exports from today’s levels sufficient to supply 50,000 California households to 100,000 by May and 200,000 households by year end, the official said.

He also said Mexico had raised concerns about U.S. plans to divert more water from the Colorado River, which could affect farmers in northwestern Mexico.

At the same time, Fox agreed to investigate ways to speed up Mexico’s repayment of its water debt to Texas farmers in time to increase supplies for this spring’s planting season. After Bush pressed hard for Mexico to address its tardy repayment of water owed to Texas under an existing agreement, the official said, Fox got on the phone to his agriculture minister and others to attend to the water debt urgently.

Discussing on radio what the presidents declared will be a jointly derived policy on migration, Fox said that Bush had assured Mexico “of his commitment to the total respect for human rights, his total commitment to avoiding violence and avoiding bad treatment of our citizens on the road to the United States.”

Fox stressed that there will be no overnight legalization of the estimated 5 million undocumented Mexicans living in the U.S., and he noted that any program would need U.S. congressional approval.

He also said the joint study will look into a possible temporary worker program to meet U.S. labor needs at a time when the U.S. population is aging and Mexico’s baby boom is just coming into its prime. Proposals to create such a “guest worker” program are to be submitted to the U.S. Congress soon and are likely to generate less opposition than any form of amnesty for illegal workers already in the United States.

“We are facing great decisions, and the attitude and commitment of President Bush are positive,” Fox said.