President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox, re-energizing their negotiations over immigration policy, are planning to unveil new border security measures and to advance their efforts to increase American investment in Mexico.
Bush, who leaves Thursday for a four-day tour of Latin America, intends to give details of his border security plans during a stop in El Paso, Texas, before continuing on to Mexico.
He is scheduled to attend a United Nations conference on global development in Monterrey, Mexico, before flying to Peru and El Salvador.
While Bush is in Mexico, he and Fox are expected to sign an agreement on cross-border traffic; it is intended to protect the security of both nations without hampering commerce.
Companies doing business on both sides of the 2,000-mile border or individuals traveling frequently from one country to the other for work could be given the means to cross quickly and virtually unimpeded. Others would have to endure closer scrutiny, officials said.
The agreement also may require that trucks crossing the border be sealed at some inland station.
The agreement with Mexico is similar to one Bush signed with Canada. However, reflecting U.S. concerns about drug shipments and illegal immigration from the south, the Mexico pact is much more restrictive than the Canada accord, administration officials said.
The so-called smart border initiative will rely heavily on new monitoring technologies such as scanners–one of which Bush is expected to examine Thursday–that allow authorities to examine the contents of cargo containers.
“We’ve got huge amounts of trade going back and forth, a lot of people going back and forth, and we’re going to talk about initiatives that make the border policy more productive, better, more efficient and, at the same time, protect both countries from terrorist threats,” Bush said Wednesday in an interview with the Spanish-language network Univision.
Bush and Fox also are expected to make progress on a joint effort to attract more U.S. investment to central and southern Mexico, although Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser, dismissed as inaccurate media reports that Bush would pledge $30 million in aid to Mexico to help attract investment funds.
The two leaders said that, if Mexico can build the necessary infrastructure to support and sustain businesses in its poorest areas, private investment could soon follow. And, with more jobs at home, fewer Mexicans may feel the need to risk illegal entry into the United States, they said.
Bush’s meeting with Fox, scheduled for Friday, is expected to reignite discussions on immigration policies that suffered a setback after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Just a few days before the attacks, Fox was in Washington lobbying Congress for a more open border.
The chief stumbling blocks in the immigration talks are how to treat more than 3 million undocumented Mexicans living in the U.S. and whether to create a guest-worker program that would allow Mexicans temporary, legal entry.
Fox is pushing for amnesty for undocumented workers living in the U.S., but a senior Bush administration official adamantly ruled it out.
“Amnesty is not in the cards,” the official said, but a guest-worker program “remains a live issue.”
Bush will spend much of his time in Mexico at the UN meeting on aid to developing nations, where some world leaders and non-governmental aid groups have criticized the president for not doing enough to assist poor countries.
The UN, the World Bank and some European leaders have been pressing Bush to double or even triple the $10 billion the U.S. annually distributes to foreign governments.
Bush responded with a plan to give as much as $5 billion more a year but only to countries that are building democratic institutions and free market economies.
“Countries that practice good habits will get money,” Bush said.
Mary McClymont, president of InterAction, a U.S.-based relief group, called Bush’s announcement “a turning point for U.S. development policy,” but she said Bush “must also be mindful that there are poor nations that won’t meet the criteria . . . and people in them must not be forgotten.”
