The proposal is part of a package of immigration policies under consideration by a joint body of the governments of the United States and Mexico. The group includes U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft from the United States and Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda and Interior Minister Santiago Creel from Mexico. Bush and Fox are expected to announce a final agreement at their planned September 4 summit.

Representatives of both administrations present the proposal as an expanded form of a "guest worker" program that would be the first step to gaining legal residence in the United States. Previously the guest worker status referred to residents of Mexico who were given temporary passes to work for specific employers in the United States. The proposal now under consideration concerns immigrants already in the country and there has been no mention of anyone having to return to Mexico to be eligible for the program.

Both governments are at pains to avoid using the word "amnesty" in their public pronouncements about the plan, mindful of the widespread support for a sweeping measure to legalize the status of millions of workers from all over the world now living permanently in the United States. The last widespread amnesty was enacted in 1986.  
 
35 million from Latin America
The proposal partially registers the impact of the massive influx of workers from Latin America, the dependence on their labor power of employers in key sectors of the economy, and their demands to be recognized as human beings with citizenship rights. According to the latest census, U.S. residents of Latin American origins increased by 53 percent in the decade to 1990, and a further 58 percent to the turn of the century. Their total population now officially stands at more than 35 million.

This influx and the increasing role of migrant workers in labor struggles led to the adoption last year of a pro-amnesty policy by the AFL-CIO union federation--a shift from decades of hostility to immigration by the majority of the union officialdom. The hotel workers union and leaderships of other unions have declared their backing for the draft proposal.

The affected workers will have to "earn" their legality, reported the New York Times. "The options would quite likely be based on the immigrants' employment records, family ties in this country, and how long they have lived in the United States," wrote Eric Schmitt in the July 15 issue.

Issues under discussion, according to the Wall Street Journal, include "whether to grant guest-worker status to illegal agricultural workers in seasonal jobs, such as picking fruit." As well as "the large number of illegal immigrants who have been hired into the U.S. service sector, providing child care and working as janitors, among other things."

In an interview with the weekly Chicago Spanish-language magazine Exito, Mexican foreign minister Castañeda claimed that this proposal would provide workers guaranteed rights, unlike the notorious bracero programs of 1942 to 1964. Those schemes, which involved 5 million workers, became notorious among migrant workers for the vicious exploitation and dangerous working conditions they were subjected to at the hands of the bosses.

Castañeda stressed that his government does not support a second amnesty for the 8 million undocumented workers in the United States, but the "regularization" of the status of a number of Mexicans. "We are negotiating for Mexico," he said, stressing that his government sought a bilateral agreement that includes "the greatest possible number of rights for the greatest possible number of Mexicans in the shortest possible time."

The Mexican foreign minister urged this "regularization" in order for migrants to obtain drivers licenses, Social Security cards, and resident tuition at colleges. He also received four standing ovations at a convention of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) in Los Angeles for a statement in support of immigrant rights and encouraging the unions to back the legalization proposals.

HERE president John Wilhelm said immigrants "are in every workplace in the United States, and they're not leaving. We have to make it clear to immigrant workers that we're on their side."  
 
Fox campaigns in Midwest
President Fox campaigned in favor of the proposal at a series of meetings in the Midwest during July, one of the first times a chief of state from Mexico was allowed to present views on U.S. domestic policy directly to a number of audiences in the country. Among working people, the Mexican president has received a positive response to his message--as expressed to a group of U.S. journalists in July--that "Mexicans who work in the United States should be considered legal. They shouldn't have to hide in the shadows." In Chicago, home to an estimated 1.4 million people of Mexican origin, he was greeted with shouts of "amnesty--the word that Mexican officials "have stricken from...their vocabulary," according to the Times.

"There should be a clear and consistent path to permanent residence for those migrants who want and are otherwise eligible to do so," he told a conference of immigrants rights advocates in Milwaukee.

Such a policy is good business in Mexico, and in the United States, said the Mexican president. At one gathering of Chicago business figures, he argued that immigrants are "not a social problem but...an economic opportunity," reported the Financial Times, echoing similar words that Bush said at Ellis Island in New York. "Immigration policies should be based on the same principles that drive trade and business investment," added Fox, who argues for a more humane policing regime on the U.S.-Mexican border in the same terms.

A number of figures from the right wing of capitalist politics have taken exception to any suggestion that undocumented workers may gain legal status. Texas Republican Sen. Philip Gramm, for example, said that such a "bad policy...rewards lawlessness." Gramm supports an expanded program to bring "guest workers" into the country but vows that any concession to undocumented workers would have to pass over his "cold, dead, political body." Well it may.

New Jersey Congresswoman Marge Roukema echoed Gramm's sentiments. "Rather than considering amnesty for illegal aliens, our government should be working to strengthen our border controls, lower immigration quotas, and crack down on illegal aliens and those who employ them," she said.

In a phone interview July 20, one advocate for immigrants rights urged any proposal include all immigrants, regardless of their country of origin. "The legalization of Mexican workers is just," said Monica Santana of the Center for Latin American Workers in New York, "but it is not just that this is not offered to other communities. This is absurd."

"There has been a change since 1995," she said. "Not only among the Republicans, but also among the unions, when they started to see immigrants not as an enemy but as an ally. That is what is starting to show the politicians which way is north."  
 
 
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