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CNN Live At Daybreak

Mexican President Expects Legal Status for Undocumented Workers in U.S.

Aired September 06, 2001 - 07:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Mexican President Vicente Fox surprised a few people when he said he expects to have legal status for more than three million undocumented Mexican workers in the U.S. as well as new rules for a guest worker program by the end of the year. Pretty fast deadline there.

We're joined by Ron Brownstein. He's with the "Los Angeles Times" but also a CNN political analyst -- good morning, Ron.

RON BROWNSTEIN, "LOS ANGELES TIMES," CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

LIN: It sure sounds like a fast track to me. What is your read on the situation? How realistic is this?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I think it's going to be very difficult to resolve all of the issues by the end of the year because what we've really got here is a very complex three way negotiation. At the same time that President Bush is negotiating with President Fox, trying to reach a joint agreement in that direction, he ultimately has to pass whatever they approve through Congress. So they are negotiating with Congress at the same time and they've really got divergent pressures here.

You've got a problem of conservative Republicans who don't want to do very much of any of this and President Bush has got to find some mean where he can both satisfy what Fox is looking for and Senate Democrats, which might be pretty similar, but also in a way that allows him to get whatever they come up with through the Republican House.

LIN: Do you think this was a strategic timing? Vicente Fox didn't pick the end of the year for, you know, by mistake. I mean I think he's pretty concerned about the congressional elections of 2002 getting in the way of this issue.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. And I think he's also concerned, Carol, that in the last few weeks the timetables on this have really sort of drifted into a more amorphous state. I mean the comments from President Bush have gotten more kind of fuzzy about what he wants and the sense of urgency in the White House has really diminished. President Fox, I think, needs to see positive results from his relationship with President Bush. His own domestic agenda has been stalled in some areas and I think he needs to show that he's getting something out of this relationship with the U.S.

So I think he tried to put a little jump start in the whole process and get it moving again.

LIN: So when President Bush says that he wants this immigration issue to be done right, what does he mean?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, done right has been a code for done slow. I mean that's basically what they have been talking about. You know, early this summer they floated the idea of doing two things together, creating a guest worker program to bring in new workers from Mexico to deal with the concerns of businesses who say they have shortages of labor, particularly for low wage service jobs, and attaching to that some kind of legalization program for the estimated three million or so Mexican-Americans who are now -- Mexicans, I guess, who are now in the country illegally.

Now, they've faced enormous resistance from conservatives to the second half of that agenda but the underlying reality is that there's no way to pass this through Congress in all likelihood without tying the two together. And so no matter how they circle around it, and Bush has been looking for some, you know, I think perfect solution, no matter how they circle around it, they're probably going to have to attach these two ideas together if they hope to get either of them off the ground.

LIN: Yes, and that apparently would be the stumbling block because there already is a guest worker program where they get temporary visas, come over, work for a while and then go back home. So perhaps that would be the stumbling block.

Before we let you go, I have to ask you about Congressman Gary Condit. He's back at work now after all the hoopla during the congressional recess and his appearance on a network television interview, etc., etc. What kind of profile do you think he's going to have on the Hill?

BROWNSTEIN: I think lower. I mean look, I mean when Dick Gephardt after that interview, the series of interviews, criticized him, that was like hearing, you know, a judge's gavel go down. That, you can't under -- you can't over state how rare that is for Dick Gephardt, the House Minority Leader, an enormous partisan, to criticize another Democrat. I can't remember another example of it. I mean it's like, I don't know, Rudy Giuliani criticizing the Yankees or something. And I think it basically says the Democrats want this story to recede. They see Condit as a distraction from what they are trying, the message they're trying to put out.

I think they're probably personally disappointed that he is making them all look bad and on an even more personal level, I think, like many Americans shocked by the non-responsiveness of his answers. So I think that they're probably looking for a way to sort of make him recede.

LIN: But the last thing they want him to do is to resign early, right, because if he resigns before January, there's going to be a special election?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. I think they would like him to serve out his term and I suspect there's a growing sentiment they would like him to serve out his term and then go on and find something else to do with the rest of his life.

LIN: OK, we shall see. And certainly the cameras, of course, will be staked out, as always, on Capitol Hill.

Thanks so much, Ron Brownstein. Good to see you.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

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