Bush, Calderon discuss immigration reform

WASHINGTON – President Bush welcomed Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderon to the White House on Thursday and got an earful about immigration restructuring and controversial legislation that Bush signed recently to construct 700 miles of wall along the common border.

“I explained our point of view that it isn’t – can’t – be a solution to the migration problem,” Calderon told Spanish-language reporters in a news conference after meeting Bush. He also said he’d try to keep immigration from drowning out other important issues in the bilateral relationship.

Calderon met Bush immediately after the U.S. president had lunched with presumed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to mend relations and discuss areas in which they could find common ground.

In the wake of his party’s defeat, Bush identified immigration revisions as one of those areas, and he repeated that in a photo session with Calderon, noting that “I assured the president-elect that the words I said in the very Oval Office that we sit about a comprehensive immigration vision are words I still believe strongly.”

Although Calderon is a conservative who shares many views with Bush, he’s been a vocal critic of the Republican-passed legislation that expands existing border-area walls in California and Arizona. Like many Mexicans, he considers it an affront that’s reminiscent of the Berlin Wall, dividing families on opposite sides of a border.

“I hope the new composition of the U.S. Congress allows a solution to the (immigration) issues,” Calderon told Mexican reporters, noting that Democrats have promoted immigration restructuring that includes some form of legalization for millions of Mexicans who are living in the United States without legal documents.

Immigration-overhaul advocates celebrated Tuesday’s election results, which included the re-election of Arizona’s pro-overhaul Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, and the defeat of Arizona Republican congressional candidate Randy Graf. The Minutemen, a self-proclaimed border vigilante group, had backed Graf.

Several of the loudest anti-immigration voices were quieted Tuesday at the polls. They included Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., and Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., who’d wrongly predicted that immigration issues would loom larger on Election Day than the war in Iraq.

“Immigration did not work as a wedge issue,” said Celinda Lake, the president of Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm.