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AMNESTY BACKED BY NEWLY ELECTED MEXICAN PRESIDENT
President-elect Vicente Fox, elected earlier this summer by the Mexican people, is backing Democratic Florida Senator Bob Graham’s amnesty bill. Fox told reporters that “My position is certainly favorable toward the amnesty.” Fox is visiting the US this week for meetings with President Clinton, Vice President Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush. Fox will also meet with Mexican immigrant groups in the US. 
Fox, the first Mexican president in 71 years not a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, told reporters, “It seems to me that (an amnesty) would document an inevitable reality that (undocumented immigrants) are really there. And in addition, it gives human beings an opportunity for development without the uncertainty and feat they live in there. I think it would be a great gesture by the United States. Let’s hope it happens.” 
Fox will take office December 1st. He has promised to appoint a “northern border czar” who will have responsibility for migration issues as well as crime, pollution and other matters. Fox also is proposing that the United States beef up its guest worker program for Mexican nationals and eventually have totally open borders for the movement of workers back and forth. Fox is further pushing the US to increase funding for aid to assist Mexico with economic development. Citing Europe’s success in stopping the flood of immigrants from Southern European Countries to their richer neighbors by allocating massive funding for economic development in the south, Fox noted, “What better thing could happen to the United States than to have a Mexico that’s successful, a Mexico without poverty, a Mexico without violence, a Mexico without drug trafficking, a Mexico with opportunities for work for all its inhabitants that would stop migration to the United States?” 
 
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