Mexico's Fox Wraps Up First State Visit
Sept. 7 -- Mexican President Vicente Fox, who is wrapping up his first state visit to Washington today, will return home having issued a challenge to his American counterpart and with the U.S. Senate having acted on his call for immigration reform.
The Democratic-led Senate moved late Thursday to pass a White House-backed bill to extend the deadline for illegal immigrants to apply for visas by one year.
The late-night vote came after Fox had appealed for more flexible immigration and trade policies in an address to a special joint session of Congress.
The Mexican leader opened his three-day state a day earlier by challenging President Bush to strike a deal on immigration reform before the year is out.
He again pressed for a quick solution during a visit with Bush to Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday.
"Let us not pass lightly over the countless sorrows and exemplary efforts of so many men and women that we call migrants," Fox said. "We must find the resolve, the necessary act, and act quickly so that we can find shared solutions to these common problems."
Bush favors a migrant work permit program that would grant legal status to Mexican workers who entered the United States illegally.
"He's asked that we will do it within the year," the president told reporters at the White House Thursday. "One thing he'll find is that we'll put 100 percent effort into it during the year and I hope we can come up with a solution."
Bush said he would like a quick agreement as Fox called for, but called immigration "an incredibly complex issue," adding: "We've got to come up with a solution that Congress will accept."
Democrats, who control the Senate, have opposed a work permit program, but favor amnesty for all undocumented Latinos already in the country, not just Mexicans.
Members of Bush's own party have fiercely opposed an amnesty for illegal immigrants, which they say would award criminality, and beat back a Bush proposal this summer to grant amnesty for an estimated 3 million Mexican illegal migrants.
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