Fox: 'We are partners'

Mexican President Vicente Fox used an address before the Utah Legislature Wednesday to issue a wider call for comprehensive immigration reform, a message likely to reach a national and international audience.

"Comprehensive reform will help both our countries to concentrate our efforts and resources on addressing our shared security and prosperity concerns," Fox said to a joint meeting of the state House and Senate.

"We are your partners in security against terrorism," the Mexican leader said during his nearly 45-minute speech. "We are your allies in the war on drugs and crime. We are your partners in the drive for economic prosperity."

Fox spoke as the U.S. Senate prepared to vote on a measure that would create a pathway to citizenship for many of the nation's estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally. Any Senate reform would have to be reconciled with a House bill that cracks down on illegal immigration but doesn't include any amnesty provisions.

And at the same time, presidential candidates in Mexico are facing a tight race. Fox can't run for re-election, but a member of his PAN party is one of three front-runners in an election that will be decided in July.

That Fox used his first-ever visit to Utah to speak to a much larger audience than the lawmakers gathered at the Capitol did not go unnoticed. "President Fox's speech was a political speech . . . it was directed to a national audience, not just us," said Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley.

Fox doesn't just have to convince U.S. leaders of his position on immigration, he has to deal with divergent opinions in Mexico, Bigelow said. "He walked that very fine line for politics in Mexico. He has to face people back home."

Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, said Fox played it safe with a controlled message on immigration, and by not opening up for media questions during his 24 hours in Utah.

During an address in Spanish Tuesday evening to Mexican-Americans in West Valley City, Fox had said building a wall along the border, as Congress is proposing, is not the solution to the nation's immigration issues.

That, and the call for comprehensive reform were the only "substantiative things" that Fox offered, Jowers said.

"The issue of immigration is too hot right now for him to completely duck it," Jowers said. "If there is no press to ask the follow-up question of what he means by (comprehensive reform) , it probably allows him to say it without putting any controversial specifics to it."