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CANCUN (Mexico), April 1: Border security and migration on Friday dominated a US-Mexico-Canada summit amid an intense debate in Washington and on US streets about countering illegal immigration. “We’ve got long borders and we’ve got to make sure we work hard to secure the borders,” said President George Bush after talks with his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the resort of Cancun.
He renewed his call for a ‘guest worker’ program that could enable some of the estimated 11.5 million undocumented workers in the United States to stay legally.
“I believe a ‘guest’ worker program will help us rid the society on the border of these coyotes who smuggle people in the back of 18-wheelers. I believe it will help get rid of the document forgers,” he said.
“I believe it is important to bring people out of the shadows of American society, so they don’t have to fear the life they live. I believe it’s important for our nation to uphold human rights and human dignity.”
But with many lawmakers from his Republican Party calling for tougher action against undocumented migrants, Mr Bush refused to say whether he would veto legislation that rejected his proposal. He only said that he wanted ‘a comprehensive bill’.
About 6.3 million of the illegal immigrants in the United States are Mexican.
In San Diego, near the border, hundreds of high school students, mainly Hispanics, again took to the streets to protest and police arrested between 30 and 40 them. Protests in California were in their sixth day, and at their peak a week ago 500,000 people had demonstrated in Los Angeles.
TRADE & TOURISM: To the leaders of the US partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mr Bush said: “The whole vision of our borders has got to be to enhance trade and tourism, but to prevent smugglers and terrorists and dope runners from polluting our countries.”
Mr Fox acknowledged that border changes were needed to improve security and make sure they do not hinder trade. He added though that there has to be legislation that ‘will guarantee legal orderly, safe and respectful migration, respecting the rights of people’.
Mr Harper, who will host the North American summit next year, said: “Over the course of the next few months, we will be doing everything possible to ensure the security along our borders and to be able to move our merchandise back and forth.”
But he also raised concerns with Mr Bush about a plan to make Canadians show a passport or similar document to be able to cross the border into the United States from next year. Until now only a driver’s license has been required of citizens at the border.
“I understand this issue has created consternation,” Mr Bush said.
The Canadian prime minister ‘made it very clear to me that he’s very worried that such an implementation of the law on the books will make it less likely people will want to travel between our countries’.
The US president said he had told Mr Harper and Mr Fox that he believed the new immigration and security laws ‘can be done in such a way that it makes future travel, future relations stronger, not weaker’.
He also said that the three countries must bolster trade so that it can compete with the emerging Asian economies. “The challenge of a growing Chinese economy, the challenge of an Indian economy — my attitude is we shouldn’t fear these challenges. We ought to welcome them and position ourselves so that we can compete.”
Mr Bush said he believed Mr Harper and Mr Fox shared his determination that North America must become ‘a competitive part of the world in the future’. —AFP
