Migration Issue Needs Bush’s Ooomph

President Bush genuinely admires his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox. But during Fox’s state visit last week, Bush glimpsed a side of his Mexican friend that he perhaps had not seen before--an impatience with political niceties that Bush himself might want to emulate.

That may be the only way for Bush to get back on track with the joint U.S.-Mexico agenda that he and Fox discussed, especially a guest-worker program to legalize the status of 3.5-million Mexicans living in this country.

It was widely reported that there was only one offbeat note during the otherwise carefully orchestrated state visit. It happened during the arrival ceremony at the White House, normally an elaborate event with every move dictated by diplomatic protocol.

Bush handled his part, saying the United States “has no more important relationship in the world” than the one with Mexico. But Fox strayed from the script, catching Bush off guard when he insisted that “we must, and we can, reach an agreement on migration before the end of this very year.”

That timetable clashes with the Bush administration’s overly cautious statements about the chances for a migration deal with Mexico.

There are, to be sure, reasons to proceed with caution on immigration.

It’s a complex issue, and a political hot button for many voters. And some influential members of Congress--not least among them Rep. Lamar S. Smith, the Texas Republican who chairs the House subcommittee on immigration--are openly dubious about guest workers.

But Bush’s caution is excessive, and that has cost him the momentum behind his gutsy idea.

What began as an admirably straightforward proposal--let Mexicans who want to work in this country do so for the employers eager to hire them and then after they’ve worked for a time, let them return home--has bogged down. As U.S. and Mexican diplomats negotiate the details, critics such as Smith wait in the wings to shoot the plan down when it gets to Capitol Hill.

The slow pace of action on guest workers has Fox worried. Which is why the straight-talking Mexican president strayed from the diplomatic script.

Now Bush needs to start getting impatient, too. He’ll never convince many anti-immigrant Republicans to see things his way. But he might talk some sense into key members of Congress like Smith.

He can start by turning on his Texas charm.

“You know, Lamar,” he can explain, “we really ain’t talkin’ about immigration here. We’re talkin’ about migration. Mexicans want to come here and work, then go home. Nothin’ we can do is gonna’ stop ‘em from tryin’, so I say let’s give ‘em a chance. Least ways if we do it in the open, we’ll know who they are, where they’re goin’ and when it’s time to send ‘em on home.”

If that doesn’t work, Bush can try the method favored by another Texas-bred president, Lyndon Johnson, and threaten to boot Smith’s rear end so far across the Texas plains that he won’t know the Pedernales from the Pecos.

Either way, Bush has to get his guest-worker proposal moving again. Because the go-slow approach to immigration reform that Smith and others advocate has been tried before and didn’t work.

It took a decade to enact the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a measure that was supposed to solve our immigration problem by penalizing employers who hired illegal immigrants, balancing that with a generous amnesty for about 2.5-million illegal immigrants.

But it is now widely agreed that for all the time, effort and energy that went into hammering out this grand legislative compromise, IRCA was a failure. Hard-working folks became U.S. citizens, but it did not stop illegal immigration.

What guarantee is there that another long effort to craft a new immigration-reform law will have any more success? Nada , as they say in Texas.

What made Bush’s original guest-worker idea intriguing was the common sense behind it. Rather than criminalizing a system of migratory labor that is well-established and vital to this country’s economy, Bush suggested bringing it into the open and regulating it to eliminate abuses and minimize the risks migrants take to get here.

He and Fox even had a historical precedent to build on--and improve--the bracero program of World War II. For all its flaws, the bracero program did work to the benefit of both countries.

And if it were recreated today, modern communications and computer technology would not only make it easier to keep track of both workers and employers but to control any abuses that may creep into a nuevo bracero program.

There will be time enough to debate immigration reform anew and ad nauseam, if Smith and others in Congress are so inclined.

But permanent immigration is really a seperate issue from the temporary migration challenge we face along our southern border. Bush must persuade--or prod--key critics such as Smith into grasping that fundamental fact.