Thread: V. Fox's US Trip Slated at "Terrible Time"?

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...21foxtrip.html

Fox's U.S. trip slated at 'terrible time' in debate on immigration

By S. Lynne Walker
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
May 21, 2006

MEXICO CITY – In politics, timing is everything – and pundits say the timing of President Vicente Fox's visit next week to California and the West couldn't be worse.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is deciding whether the California National Guard will participate in President Bush's plan to send 6,000 troops to the border. The Utah Minutemen are planning a protest in Salt Lake City, where Fox will meet with several hundred Mexicans during the first stop of a four-day trip that also takes him to Washington state.

And as Fox is speaking to a joint session of the California Legislature on Thursday, the U.S. Senate might be preparing to vote on an immigration bill that declares English the national language of the United States and calls for the construction of double-and triple-layered fencing along 370 miles of the border.

The stated purpose of Fox's visit to Sacramento on Thursday and to Los Angeles on Friday is to strengthen economic and political ties between California and Mexico.

Fox and members of his Cabinet will meet privately in Sacramento with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles. Later, Fox will attend a reception and dinner hosted by Schwarzenegger, their first meeting since the governor took office.

In Los Angeles, Fox will meet with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then visit with members of the Mexican community.

But at every stop, Fox is certain to be hounded by questions about immigration – questions he can't answer without angering either the Bush administration or Mexicans back home.

“It's a terrible time to come because emotions are running high on the illegal-immigration issue,” said George Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. “Immigration is just a lightning rod, and he's going to come into the country and he's going to have to say critical things about Bush's speech. That's just going to infuriate the White House.”

The fact that Mexico is six weeks away from a presidential election has forced Fox into a rhetorical corner.

He was roundly criticized by Mexicans for saying last week that Bush's call for the deployment of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border was “logical.” So Fox quickly shifted to a tough-talk approach, saying during stops in Tijuana and Mexicali on Thursday that walls and troops “are not the solution.” On that point, Fox has an ally in Núñez, who said he is “categorically opposed to deploying the National Guard to the border.”

“It sends the wrong message to our neighbors to the south,” Núñez said in an interview Friday. “We're not in a state of war with Mexico. If we want to do a better job of patrolling our border, of securing our border, which is our obligation, we should do it with appropriate personnel, but not military personnel.”

Núñez said his office contacted Fox a month ago about a possible visit to California, renewing an earlier invitation extended by the California legislator when he visited Fox during a goodwill mission to Mexico City in August 2005.

With the congressional fight over immigration legislation building to a crescendo, “Fox's visit marks an important milestone in the effort to take the No. 1 foreign-policy issue today, which is immigration, and to put in the proper context,” Núñez said. “The president's visit is really going to help set the right tone for this immigration debate.”

But political analyst José Antonio Crespo warned that Fox's decision to visit a sharply divided United States could further polarize Americans on the issue of illegal immigration.

“Maybe he thinks that he can influence the decision of the U.S. senators. But if he thinks that, he has badly miscalculated,” Crespo said. “This doesn't help the Mexican cause or the image of President Fox. Any comments he makes can be misunderstood there or here by the Mexican public.”

There are rumors that Fox will cancel his U.S. trip, a claim that presidential spokesman Rubén Aguilar denied.

“We are going to make the trip the way it has been planned,” he said.

Fox's trip could backfire and provoke a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, Grayson said.

“There is less 'poor Mexico' sentiment. There's less of a view of victimization,” he said.

Americans are polling 2-to-1 in favor of an enforcement-heavy immigration bill passed by the House of Representatives in December making unlawful presence in the United States a felony, Grayson said.

That shift in attitude suggests the country may be moving toward tougher treatment of undocumented Mexicans in the future.

“I look for these 6,000 National Guardsmen to only be the first step toward a serious move to militarize the border,” Grayson said.

Well I hope something infuriates Bush!