The United States and Mexico: Immigration Policy and the Bilateral Relationship

Testimony of MPI President Demetrios G. Papademetriou before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee on Foreign Relations. 

Thank you for the invitation to comment on the President’s immigration reform proposals in the context of the broader U.S./Mexico relationship. 

In his far-reaching statement of January 7, 2004, President Bush returned to one of the earliest themes of his Presidency and to one of the country’s most intractable policy and political dilemmas: how to manage better the U.S. immigration system. Echoing the refrain of “safe, orderly, and legal” immigration of his first meeting with Mexico’s President Vincente Fox in February, 2001, Mr. Bush acknowledged again that while the U.S. “values” and “depends on” immigrants, our broken immigration system “condemns…millions of hardworking men and women” to working in a “massive, undocumented economy… [albeit in] jobs American citizens are not filling.” Mr. Bush’s prescription? A massive and apparently rolling temporary worker program both for currently unauthorized and new immigrants matching “willing workers” with “willing employers.” [...]"