Thread: President-elect calls for new relationship

President-elect calls for new relationship

President-elect Felipe Calderón, on U.S. soil Wednesday, called for "sensitive solutions" to the binational migration challenge and a new relationship between the United States and Mexico

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/21699.html

The Herald Mexico
El Universal
Jueves 09 de noviembre de 2006

WASHINGTON - President-elect Felipe Calderón, on U.S. soil Wednesday, called for "sensitive solutions" to the binational migration challenge and a new relationship between the United States and Mexico.

"I didn´t come to the United States to ask this great country to fix our problems," Calderón said as he kicked off a two-day visit that will include a meeting with U.S. President George Bush in the Oval Office on Thursday. "I came to establish the terms of a new collaborative relationship that will allow us to confront and resolve together the problems we have in common."

Calderón, speaking to the (U.S.) Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Latino Coalition, said the very economic disparities between the two neighbors that led to the migration problem could form the basis of its solution.

"The United States and Mexico have clearly complementary economies," he said. "Mexico´s is labor intensive and the United States´ is capital intensive. The prosperity of both nations is based on knowing how to adapt to this complementarity."

Calderón´s U.S. visit, his third trip abroad since being declared president-elect on Sept. 5, comes just two weeks after Bush signed legislation calling for a 700-mile high-tech wall along the border. Calderón, along with President Fox and most other Mexican officials from across the political spectrum, opposes construction of a border fence.

On Friday, he expressed his opposition in positive terms. "I imagine the Mexico-United States border not as a zone of walls and wire fences but as a zone of opportunities and of prosperity for Mexicans and Americans," he said.

Calderón, who will take office on Dec. 1, arrived in Washington a day after the U.S. mid-term elections in which voters sent a mixed message on the migration issue. Initiatives were approved in several states denying government services to undocumented immigrants, but a number of hard-liner anti-immigrant legislators such as Arizona´s J.D. Hayworth were voted out of office.

Calderón, like Fox before him, is attempting to change the U.S. debate about the influx of undocumented Mexican workers - from a U.S. problem to a binational challenge.

"Migration is not a desirable phenomenon for anybody," he said in Washington Wednesday. "It divides our families, leaves hundreds of thousands of our children without their fathers and robs our communities of their hardest workers."

Calderón was scheduled to meet later Wednesday with World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is of Mexican descent.

On Thursday, he´ll have breakfast with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Also scheduled to attend the breakfast are U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Calderón will then meet with Bush at the White House, after which the two are expected to hold a brief news conference.

He is also to meet with Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean on Thursday.

With migration issues certain to be on the agenda, Calderón is expected to discourage the enforcement-based approach that has gained favor recently among U.S. legislators. "(Illegal migration) is not a desirable phenomenon," Calderón said. "But it´s also not a phenomenon that authorities can eliminate by decree."

The only relationship we should have with Mexico is NO Relationship. These people have gone out of their way to send a signal (and a tsunami of illegals) that they are the ENEMY of America.

Originally Posted by Cindy

The only relationship we should have with Mexico is NO Relationship. These people have gone out of their way to send a signal (and a tsunami of illegals) that they are the ENEMY of America.

I see an invasion too. Why doesn't all of America.

President-elect Felipe Calderón, on U.S. soil Wednesday, called for "sensitive solutions" to the binational migration challenge and a new relationship between the United States and Mexico.

"I didn´t come to the United States to ask this great country to fix our problems," Calderón said as he kicked off a two-day visit that will include a meeting with U.S. President George Bush in the Oval Office on Thursday. "I came to establish the terms of a new collaborative relationship that will allow us to confront and resolve together the problems we have in common."

You want a relationship with us. On behalf of America, I say go to hell. How's that for a relationship you parasite?