(President) Fox Begins Visit in Immigrant-Friendly Utah [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Fox Begins Visit in Immigrant-Friendly Utah
Mexico's president is welcomed by the state's political elite and hailed by his countrymen.
By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer
May 24, 2006


WEST VALLEY, Utah — Mexican President Vicente Fox kicked off a four-day U.S. visit Tuesday by decrying congressional proposals to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants in Mexico, saying that "we won't resolve this problem with fences, but hand in hand, working together."

Fox told a cheering crowd of 1,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans — some of whom had come from as far as Montana to hear him — that they helped keep the U.S. economy running and displayed the hard work and honesty that did their ancestral country proud.
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The Senate is expected to vote Thursday on immigration legislation that may allow many of the 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country to remain, a proposal that conservatives in the House have vowed to block.

Analysts say the current environment makes Fox's trip a risky undertaking.

"He's shooting himself in the foot — with a machine gun," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "The last thing senators and representatives in Washington want is someone from abroad telling them how to legislate."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fox24may24,1,3193193.story?coll=la-headlines-nation