Global Policy Forum

By Tim Weiner

Irma Anzures was driving back to Juarez yesterday afternoon over the Free Bridge, after a little shopping in El Paso, Texas, when Mexican customs officers pulled her over for a routine inspection. Then the president of Mexico stuck his head in the window. "How's it going?" President Vicente Fox asked Anzures, who runs three fast- food restaurants in Juarez with her husband. "How are the people treating you? Everything OK?"

A million Mexicans who live and work in the United States are coming home for Christmas, and Fox, as their new president, wants to welcome them back to a changed country. The Free Bridge is not always free. On the US side, in El Paso, officials take pains to stop suspicious people, routinely backing up traffic a mile or more. On the Mexican side, in Juarez, officials sometimes take money for no reason. "People have a lot of complaints, especially about bribes disguised as fines or fees," said Lizbeth Vela, a 21-year-old business administration student.

Fox dropped in at the Free Bridge on a two-day tour of border posts and stations, part of a campaign he began with his inauguration speech 12 days ago. He wants the millions of Mexicans crossing the border in both directions each year to travel more freely and easily; to hold more US visas allowing them to work legally; and to face fewer shakedowns from Mexican border officials when they come home.He also wants Mexican Americans to enjoy full dual citizenship, including the right to vote from the United States by absentee ballots.

All this is part of his larger vision -- that some day the border will no longer be a barrier fortified by armed guards, but a mere line on a map dividing two partners in a common market, with much more in common than what today divides the United States and Mexico.

Fox sees the millions who have left for the United States as courageous and creative souls who "want to dream the American dream." "We want to salute these heroes, these kids leaving their homes, their communities, leaving with tears in their eyes, saying goodbye to their families, to set out on a difficult, sometimes painful search for a job, an opportunity they can't find at home, their community or their own country," he said Tuesday during a stop at a border post in Nogales, just south of the Arizona border.

The economic power of Mexicans in the United States is huge in Mexico. Their remittances -- the money that the migrants send back home -- can be a huge boon to poor villages and towns in a nation where perhaps half of the nearly 100 million people are dirt-poor.

Though estimates vary, the best guess is that the workers among the roughly 8 million Mexicans living in the United States send between $6 billion and $8 billion back to their families every year, making them at least the third- biggest legitimate force in the Mexican economy, after oil and tourism.

Fox wants his heroes to come home, eventually, but first he says he has to create the economic conditions that will draw them back. He has said repeatedly that illegal immigration from Mexico will not cease until the Mexican economy can provide more jobs and better pay, offsetting the demand for Mexican labor in the United States.

The United States should see legal migrants in a different light, said Isela Arrendondo, who works for the Chihuahua state convention bureau in Juarez. "I know the United States is worried about drugs, illegals, contraband and such things," she said. "But legal travel, with passports and visas -- there's a human right to travel freely and not be regarded as a criminal."

Fox may have little power to change the way the United States regards Mexican migrants, legal and illegal. But on this tour -- a campaign, really, exhorting public officials to clean up their acts -- in much the same way that he sought votes during his three-year campaign for president, he is trying to make the border a better place for a homecoming.

"We've got to build in this delicate terrain," he told a group of customs officials. "On one hand, comply with the law, and on the other, to have the heart and the desire to embrace our fellow countrymen and brothers."