FOX PUSHES IMMIGRATION, DRUG-FIGHT CHANGES

U.S. visit: Mexico's president-elect has high hopes for meetings with
Clinton, Gore, Bush.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox, flush from taking on his
country's entrenched political system, will challenge American leaders with
some aggressive proposals during his three-day visit to the United States.

Among them are freer movement for Mexican workers into the United States,
which labor unions oppose, and an end to the annual certification of
countries as good partners in the war against drugs as a condition for U.S.
aid.

Neither President Clinton and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore,
whom Fox meets today, nor Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush,
whom Fox meets Friday in Dallas, is likely to embrace either of Fox's
high-visibility policy challenges to Washington.

In Rose Garden remarks Wednesday, President Clinton noted ``the need for us
to work together to deal with the drug challenge,'' but did not refer
directly to certification or to freer movement of workers.

``I think he's quite serious about modernizing the Mexican economy,''
Clinton said of Fox. ``I've been impressed with what I've seen and heard
about him so far, and I'm anxious to meet him.''

46ox may be more successful in his efforts to secure more foreign
investment in Mexico. He met Wednesday with Canadian business leaders in
Toronto and will meet Friday with U.S. business representatives in Dallas.
He also wants investment help from Mexican and Mexican-American communities
abroad, which send home money vital to their Mexican relatives.

Even if Fox fails to convince U.S. leaders on the immigration and drug
issues, it won't be a total loss: He benefited politically from raising the
issues during his campaign and will gain further by raising them with
American leaders. Many Mexicans view U.S. immigration-control efforts as
hypocritical and say Mexican migrants wouldn't go north if they weren't
getting jobs.

The United States spends billions to control the flow of illegal migrants.
Fox instead favors expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement among
the United States, Canada and Mexico to permit free movement across borders,
as countries in the European Union have done.

46ox says the opening of Europe's borders, coupled with more investment by
richer EU countries in poorer ones, helped cut illegal immigration from
poorer countries, such as Portugal and Greece, into Germany and France.

The drug-certification process also is widely unpopular. Many commentators
in Mexico say it treats the country like a child rewarded for being good and
punished for being bad.

46ox wants the certification process replaced with individual goals for
drug-producing countries such as Colombia and Peru, drug-transit countries
such as Mexico and drug-consuming countries such as the United States.

During Mexico's presidential campaign, Fox said he hoped to double U.S.
investment in the world's largest Spanish-speaking country, with a
population of about 100 million. He sees increased foreign investment as
vital to producing more good-paying jobs in Mexico.

There's a lot of good will abroad for Fox, in part because of his victory
July 2 in Mexico's freest and most honest election. That victory ended 71
years of dominance by Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, which many
had come to view as corrupt and inefficient. Business leaders in Mexico and
abroad are counting on the 58-year-old former Coca-Cola executive to make it
easier to do business there.