Bush Can’t Have Latino Support and Mexico, Too

When Mexican President Vicente Fox returns to Washington this week, the big question is whether he and President Bush will deliver on an immigration accord they have led us to expect for most of the year. The political and human conundrum of illegal immigration has proved to be harder to solve than either president realized when they first agreed to accelerate negotiations at their February meeting in Mexico. Part of the problem is that Bush genuinely desires both to attract more Latino support at home and help the Fox administration succeed in Mexico. Bush believes that progress on immigration reform can accomplish these objectives. In policy terms, however, the two goals are quite different, and that could mean political trouble for Bush.

Besides providing Fox and Bush with a publicity boost, the immediate political purpose of the visit, now billed as a binational summit, is to generate support in the United States for giving Mexico a special place in U.S. immigration policy. A “grand bargain” on immigration, it will be said, is key to opening up new bilateral opportunities and enhancing the overall relationship. Although Fox has lately lowered his rhetoric about his hopes for U.S.-Mexico relations, he and his advisors haven’t scaled back their audacious long-term objectives.

The current focus of talks is a new guest-worker program, a rather modest objective compared with Fox’s ambition, articulated last year, to open the border and create a European Union-style North American community in which Mexico would receive huge injections of U.S. aid to boost its economic development. It was first floated in the United States as a Mexican-only program, which would be a retreat from--even a betrayal of--Fox’s pledge to Central American governments last year to represent the whole region’s interests before the United States on immigration policy. But opposition from U.S. Latinos, labor unions and the Catholic Church has killed the idea of exclusivity.

After the Fox administration had publicly backed off its goal of a EU-style community in the face of widespread skepticism in the United States, it seized upon the idea of a guest-worker program as an interim goal because it enjoyed ready-made GOP support. Then, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

More important, a Republican and business-friendly guest-worker program, which Mexico wants anyway, could help Fox achieve his EU-style North American community. Fox’s team believes that agreement on immigration is the first step toward transforming the whole U.S.-Mexico relationship along EU lines. Ideally, such an agreement would include some language on how the two countries can cooperate in mitigating the root causes of migration from Mexico. Ultimately for Mexico, a guest-worker program does not have to stem all illegal immigration or solve the problem of undocumented residents in the United States. Even a failed program, especially if accompanied by the appearance of good-faith efforts, could serve as the basis for a U.S. aid commitment to rural and small-town Mexico.

The Fox team is betting that better U.S.-Mexico cooperation in drug enforcement, energy, border control and other areas, as well as political competition for Latino votes in U.S. elections, will make it impossible for any U.S. administration or Congress to reverse course on bilateral migration management once it is undertaken. Mexico and the United States, partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, will continuously press ahead with aid and government-backed development schemes in Mexico to alleviate immigration pressures.

At this juncture, Mexico is not playing the “Latino card” to get its way. Although they have benefited from the rising political clout of Latinos, some Mexican officials privately disdain it, feeling they have far weightier arguments to persuade the administration and congressional leaders to reform immigration policy. Instead, Mexico is playing the “success of democracy and reform in Mexico card,” especially since the Fox administration has been unable to advance its main domestic objectives.

But just getting the United States to talk about immigration reform is a success for Mexican foreign policy and Foreign Minister Jorge G. Castaneda. Mexican officials know that governments and legislatures can have only so many initiatives in the air simultaneously. For Mexico, it was critical to get some talks going on immigration in order to advance its goal of expanding NAFTA to include immigration and development assistance before the Bush administration tries to recover “fast-track” authority to pursue the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Although Fox remains highly popular among people of Mexican origin in the United States, Latino leaders are warily eyeing the immigration talks. To them, a guest-worker program is inherently undesirable; at best, it is a concession to be made only if it leads to permanent resident status. If a guest-worker program is conceded or imposed without the hope of legalization, a critical source of political leverage will be lost and the cause of legalization unacceptably set back. From Fox on down, Mexican officials have taken contradictory and shifting positions on this Latino priority.

Bush’s quest for more Latino votes and his desire to help Mexico will force him to make a choice. If he opts for immigration reform that benefits only Mexicans and is centered on a new guest-worker program, as he has repeatedly stressed, Bush will have a political fight with Latinos on his hands, even if he has Fox in his corner.