End of an affair? Immigration, security and the U.S.-Mexican relationship.

• Author: Leiken, Robert S.

THEY SEEMED made for each other. Taking office side by side as "compassionate conservatives", George W. Bush and Vicente Fox were united by more than a hankering for cowboy boots and ranching. President Bush was eager to demonstrate his familiarity with at least one foreign country and to utter entire phrases in Spanish. Intimacy with Vicente Fox also promised Latino votes, a blooming constituency (and possibly a decisive one in the 2004 election). Besides, "San Vicente" was the first feel-good story of the new millennium, conquering the 71-year crusty authoritarian rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and sweeping into office on a wave of reform sentiment. For Fox, Bush held countless charms, none more shimmering than the hope of an immigration accord that could relieve pressure on the economy, charm Mexico's human rights and nationalist constituencies, and endear Fox to migrants who are influential with voters back home.

The two former governors, their political interests converging, thus seemed poised to grasp the nettle of Mexican migration. In February 2001 Fox got to host the new U.S. President's first foreign trip, a bouquet previously reserved for Canada. Bush brought handsome gifts to Fox's ranch in Guanajuato: immigration was placed atop the bilateral agenda, an honor hitherto reserved for drugs. Bush also proposed a top-level bilateral migration commission comprised of Secretary of State Cohn Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and their Mexican counterparts, Jorge Castaneda and Santiago Creel. The offer was accepted and the commission was empowered to work out a bilateral migration agreement.

The Mexicans soon showered the fledgling Bush Administration with memoranda advocating and defining the "regularization" of Mexican immigration: more green cards, amnesty of illegals, a temporary worker program, border safety. Meanwhile, Fox barnstormed key Latino constituencies, calling on Washington to "get real", and Castaneda told a cheering AFL-CIO that President Bush must accept "the whole enchilada [i.e., including amnesty] or nothing."

The promise of an immigration accord, in turn, served partisan U.S. aspirations. It appealed to low-wage businesses wishing to "match willing workers with willing employers", to use Bush's phrase. An impressive coalition in favor of a Mexican immigration agreement took shape, as a bidding war between Democrats and Republicans commenced. The "chips" in that war were illegal Latino aliens to be certified for full or "partial" amnesty. Both parties recognized that a Mexican immigration deal had the support of all the usual immigration "players", including ethnic lobbies and labor unions (the latter now counting on immigrant workers for most of its new recruits).

Bush brought the tall stranger home to meet the folks at his first White House state dinner. In that one dizzying week before September 11, 2001, Fox got to address a joint session of Congress, join the President on a swing through the Midwest, and bask in a flood of American political and media attention unprecedented for a Latin American head of state. The Mexicans were swept off their feet. However, party elders sitting on Republican back benches, scandalized by talk of a new amnesty for Mexican immigrants, were already frowning at this liaison. Their disapproval would break with full force after September 11.

Left at the Altar

SEPTEMBER 11 intruded rudely on the budding U.S.-Mexican romance like an uninvited witch at a wedding. To many Americans, immigration, which had seemed only to dish out gentle and inexpensive gardeners and nannies, suddenly appeared dangerous. Immigration was now viewed through the somber lens of homeland security, as vulnerability stared at us from every airport, bridge, chemical and nuclear plant, water system, computer terminal, salad bar and unopened envelope. Even benign Canada, across a far less problemetic border, held horrors.

Then the bad news broke on our heads that the organizations assigned to shield us were not up to the job. One after another they were implicated and fell into disrepute: airport security, the FAA, the Transportation Department, the FBI, the CIA and the NSA. But for sheer incompetence the INS was peerless, capable of dispatching student visa notifications to hijackers six months after they had plowed into the New York City skyline. With such an agency we would "regularize" millions of illegal immigrants? Meanwhile, Border Patrol officers were forsaking their poorly paid and daunting work for jobs as air marshals.

After 9/1l Bush had a mission that took him away from his personal passions. He turned to old comrades, Britain and Canada. Now his newest new friend was Vladimir Putin. Mexico, however, refused to play the patient Griselda. When Foreign Minister Castaneda championed America's "right of reprisal" and vowed that Mexico would not "haggle" over its loyalty, Mexico's media, intellectuals, old-line politicians and influential left-wing erupted. The Senate, led by the erstwhile ruling party, called for Castaneda's scalp. Santiago Creel, the fiery foreign minister's chief rival in Fox's quarrelsome cabinet, insinuated that Castaneda was acting as a stooge for the Americans. Fox fell uncharacteristically silent. Friendship with Bush was now exacting a price as the Fox Administration failed to grasp, as Tony Blair did instantly, the sea change in the American public and their politics.

The Top Level Talks on migration, as they were called, were put off when they eventually resumed the Americans insisted on devoting them to shoring up the border, not legalizing Mexican migrants. Fox complied, thinking Bush would come around with time. But when the presidents next met at an international meeting in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002, the body language was noticeably different and the immigration dowry had gone missing. Bush, courtly and evasive, said the deal would come manana.

The reason is instructive. In anticipaanticipation of the Monterrey meeting, Bush sincerely wished to provide a token of his esteem to Fox. The administration thus lobbied the Congress to reinstate section 245(i) of the immigration code. Section 245(i) applies to foreigners who are already illegally residing in the United States when their immigrant visas or "green cards" become available. Under the program they may pay a $1,000 fine and "adjust their status" in the United States, rather than return home to obtain the visa at an American consulate. (Generally, these illegal aliens are relatives of settled immigrants who have sponsored their admission.) The measure aroused strong opposition from House Republicans, led by the restrictionist Immigration Reform Caucus, whose membership had swelled after 9/11. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) placed a hold on the program in the Senate, echoing the argument of House Republicans that the program was an "amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, many of whom have not undergone any background or security check." But the 245(i) program is but a partial mini-amnesty. It would only apply to about 200,000 of the nine million foreigners in the United States, and it merely permits them to undergo background security checks by the INS in the United States instead of having to undergo security checks by the State Department's consular service in their country of origin.

The strength of congressional opposition to such a mild measure startled the White House and led it to realize how deeply 9/11 had interred the U.S.-Mexican immigration agenda. The prospects of a real "amnesty", which would legalize four million Mexican migrants just for starters, was now beyond the political horizon. Clearly, the mood had shifted. In one national poll after September 11, more than 80 percent concluded that the United States had "made it too easy" for foreigners to enter the country; (1) in another, 77 percent said the...