President George W. Bush and Mexico's President-Elect Felipe Calderón met at the White House last Thursday, largely to discuss curbing illegal immigration. Some of Bush's more moderate reform proposals have met with stiff opposition in Republican-led Congress over the last six years, but may be more feasible now that Democrats have won majorities in both the House and Senate.
"I assured the President-elect that the words I said... about a comprehensive immigration vision are words I still believe strongly," Bush told reporters after Thursday's closed-door meeting.
Throughout his presidency, Bush has been pushing for a Guest Worker Program that would allow screened and approved Mexicans to obtain once-renewable three-year visas to work in the United States. The program intends to lessen pressure on Mexicans to immigrate illegally, as well as reduce U.S. demand for illegal workers.
Last month, Bush signed into law the conservative-led Secure Fence Act of 2006, which calls for the construction of 700 miles of border fencing along parts of California, Arizona, and Texas, but does not have provisions for increasing legal immigration. The measure may have been intended largely to win support from conservative voters.
Yet some Mexicans, including Calderón, are angry about the plan to build 700 miles of wall—which would cover one-third of the U.S.-Mexico border. To many, it is an affront to the spirit of economic and political cooperation the two nations have developed over the last generation.
Some in the U.S. see the measure as a sign of immaturity.
"It's a perversion to be building walls between two countries that are as economically integrated—and as historically tied together—as the United States and Mexico," said Dan Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. "I think the wall is a terrible symbol of the inability of the United States to deal constructively with the illegal immigration issue."
Griswold calls the Guest Worker Program "the cornerstone of any serious reform." Without some kind of expanded legal channel for new workers, he says, the United States will to continue to struggle with large-scale illegal immigration because U.S. demand for these low-wage workers is high and the number of Americans willing to fill these jobs is insufficient. Tighter border security, while necessary, must be supplemented by policy that allows for legal immigration, he says.
The Guest Worker Program is one of the few Bush initiatives supported by liberals far more than by conservatives. Now that the mid-term elections have put into power Democrats that tend to agree with Bush's more moderate measures on immigration, it is "greater than 50/50," believes Griswold, that the new Congress will pass comprehensive immigration reform along the lines of what Bush has been advocating.
"The biggest roadblock to that reform has been House Republicans and in particular the House Judiciary Committee leadership," he said. "That, of course, has all changed now in the new Congress. I think this will be one area where the President, the Democratic Congress, and a significant number of Republicans can work together for positive change."
During their brief comments to the press after the White House talks, neither Bush nor Calderón mentioned their disagreement about the border fence issue, but instead stressed that they look forward to a constructive relationship once Calderón begins his six-year term next month.
Calderón commented to the press that the continued growth in Mexico's economy is also an important factor in dealing with immigration issues. "[President Bush and I] both understand that the only solution to many of the problems that we have is to create well-paid jobs in Mexico," Calderón said. "And for that, we need even more investment."
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