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Bush reassures Mexicans on immigration

An effigy of US President George W. Bush hangs from a lamp post in Mexico City during a protest against Bush's visit to Mexico on Tuesday. Mexican President Felipe Calderon met with Bush in the town of Merida on the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday and the two men were to meet again yesterday for more talks. PHOTO: AP

US President George W. Bush tried to reassure increasingly skeptical Mexicans on Tuesday that he has not given up on overhauling US immigration policy despite failing in Congress last year.

Bush told Mexican President Felipe Calderon in their first summit meeting he would try again to convince US lawmakers to pass his plans to soften immigration laws and allow a guest worker program.

"My pledge to you and your government, but more importantly the people of Mexico, is that I will work as hard as I possibly can to pass comprehensive immigration reform," Bush said at a luxury hotel set on farm grounds on the outskirts of the Yucatan Peninsula city of Merida.

Violent protests dogged Bush on a visit to Mexico, with demonstrators lobbing concrete blocks at his hotel, smashing up a nearby town hall and battling riot police outside the US Embassy in Mexico City.

In the capital, several hundred demonstrators carrying signs bearing slogans like "Bush, Assassin, we don't want you as a neighbor" protested Bush's visit by throwing rocks at heavily armored riot police guarding the embassy. Police tossed rocks back from behind a security fence, then charged at the rioters, dispersing them with tear gas.

"Migration cannot be stopped and certainly not by decree."

Felipe Calderon, Mexican president

A handful of police were injured and three protesters were arrested, a police spokesman said.

About 100 protesters marched to Bush's hotel in Merida for the second night in a row carrying Mexican flags and calling the US president a "murderer."

The protesters pounded on high metal security barriers outside the hotel in an unsuccessful attempt to bring them down and hurled chunks of concrete from sidewalks over the barrier at riot police lining the other side. Bush was away from his hotel at the time.

Mexicans make up more than half of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US, and Mexico is upset at US plans to build a security fence along parts of the border to curb illegal immigration.

Calderon has criticized the plan.

"Migration cannot be stopped and certainly not by decree," he told reporters.

Calderon told a Mexican newspaper he did not have high hopes for Bush's visit and said he wanted Mexico to get closer to Cuba.

Bush had made immigration reform pledges to Mexico's former president, Vicente Fox, but he failed to get an overhaul through Congress last year due to conservative concerns about border enforcement. Whether Democrats will be open to an immigration deal is uncertain.

Bush and Calderon were to met again yesterday before Bush headed back to Washington.
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