Political Realities Intrude on Promise of Change

President Bush faces the formidable challenge of building a domestic consensus for immigration reform after his summit this week with Mexican President Vicente Fox highlighted as many obstacles as opportunities in their search for a new partnership.

As they completed their two-day visit Thursday, the two presidents could point to tangible progress on several issues that have long strained relations across the border, particularly the fight against Mexican drug cartels.

But the vagueness of much of their language on immigration reform underscored Bush’s struggle to construct a plan that can satisfy Fox, attract support in Congress and avoid an open split with Republican conservatives.

In that sense, what the two men didn’t say about immigration may have been more important than what they did: The absence of specifics showed how far they remain from an agreement that would meet all those goals. Indeed, many analysts believe one lesson of the summit is that Bush eventually may have to choose between those aims.

For Bush, and most Republicans, the main priority in talks has been to meet the desires of U.S. business for a program that would allow low-wage U.S. service industries to import temporary workers from Mexico--a goal of many of the party’s business supporters.

But the last few days have made clear that to obtain Mexico’s agreement for such a plan, as well as the acquiescence of congressional Democrats, Bush may have to permit at least some of the Mexicans now working illegally in the United States an opportunity to earn the “green card” that makes them permanent legal residents. And that idea is anathema to GOP conservatives.

“There has to be a nexus between temporary workers and a route to a green card,” acknowledged a senior White House official. Lacking that, “the temporary worker program is a dead letter.”

Bush nodded toward that conclusion himself Thursday, when he said for the first time publicly that he was “willing to consider ways for a guest worker to earn green card status.”

White House officials say the Bush administration is focused on finding ways to soften conservative resistance to legalization. Toward that end, officials are discussing ideas such as requiring illegal immigrants moving toward legal status to pay a fine, maintain sustained employment, learn English or even place some of their wages in an escrow account that would be available only if they move back to their home country.

Although conservative resistance to any legalization plan appears as strong as ever, Fox took every opportunity this week to pressure Bush to pursue broad changes.

Both publicly and in private conversations, Fox hinted that he believes Bush already has given him a personal commitment to fundamentally reshape the two nations’ approach to migration. In comments Wednesday night at a state dinner, the Mexican leader said that when Bush visited Fox’s ranch last winter--the meeting that launched the immigration negotiations--”I had the feeling that we were making true commitments, that we were working together to enhance the relationship” between the U.S. and Mexico.

What Fox indicated this week--starting with his unexpected call Wednesday for the two nations to reach an immigration agreement by year’s end--was that he’s determined to hold Bush to the commitments he believes he received.

The most immediate benefits for Mexico from Fox’s visit may come not on immigration but drugs. After Fox on Thursday urged Congress to suspend the annual process by which the U.S. certifies whether Mexico is sufficiently cooperative in the war against drugs, Bush endorsed the idea at a brief news conference with the Mexican president.

Perhaps more significantly, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a leading critic of Mexico’s performance in the drug war during the late 1990s, said Thursday that she believes Fox’s record has earned his country an exemption from the annual certification process. “This Mexican administration has made more progress in six months on the drug issue than the prior administrations did in the past nine years I’ve been here,” she said.

On immigration, the summit offered the two presidents an opportunity to reignite an effort that had lost momentum over the past month. Earlier this summer, negotiators leaked reports that the administration and Mexico were discussing a “grand bargain” that would allow U.S. employers to import new temporary workers, permit at least some of the estimated 3 million to 3.5 million Mexicans now working illegally in the U.S. to earn permanent resident status and require Mexico to crack down on further illicit border crossing.

But the prospect of allowing these illegal immigrants to move toward permanent resident status--and ultimately citizenship--draws an intense backlash from many GOP conservatives, who maintain that it would reward lawbreaking. “Opposition is pretty strong in the House,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group opposed to high levels of immigration. “There’s a strong desire to follow the president, but they don’t want to follow the president off a cliff.”

Faced with such resistance--and polls showing that opposition to legalization is greatest among Republican voters--the White House had been systematically lowering expectations. Bush and other administration officials downplayed the prospect of legalization while emphasizing their interest in a guest-worker program--and indicating that whatever is done isn’t likely to be done quickly.

Yet this week’s developments suggest that the underlying political dynamics may ultimately push the White House back to a position close to where it started--linking a guest-worker program with legalization for at least some illegal immigrants. The joint statement Fox and Bush issued Thursday hinted at that likelihood by directing the binational group negotiating the issue to reach agreement on “border safety, a temporary worker program and the status of undocumented Mexicans in the United States.”

One force pushing for the linkage of legalization and a guest-worker program is Mexico. Beyond Fox’s pressure for an early agreement, Mexican officials made clear that they believe any deal must address Mexicans already in the U.S., as well as future guest workers.

A second force is the legislative reality of a divided Congress. Traditionally leery of guest-worker programs, Democrats have made clear that they will accept one only if tied to a legalization plan. “If there is no road to legalization, it is dead in the water,” insisted Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), who co-chaired a Democratic immigration task force.

Adding to the pressure on the White House, key elements of the business community have accepted Reyes’ assessment. The Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, an alliance of service industries pushing for a guest-worker program, has repeatedly argued that it would not be possible to pass such a plan through Congress and then deal with legalization later, as some in the administration have suggested.

Finally, domestic political considerations may be pressuring Bush. His advisors have hoped that a breakthrough on immigration specifically, and relations with Mexico more broadly, would help the president increase his share of the Latino vote from the roughly one-third he won last year. But having raised expectations on immigration reform, many believe that Bush could find himself worse off among Latinos if he seems to abandon the legislative effort because of conservative resistance.

For all these reasons, said one Republican lobbyist close to the administration, “my view is that they are going to come back to legalizing the folks that are here and a guest-worker program, because they can’t do one without the other, and they need the guest-worker program.”

That conclusion, though, hardly seems settled within the White House.

“There is much more to it than coming up with an agreement with Fox,” said a senior administration official. “The bigger problem is the conservative Republicans who want none of this.”