WASHINGTON -- Both Al Gore and George W. Bush used recent speeches to herald the contributions of immigrants to America. Their speeches, and the Elian Gonzalez case, have moved the immigration issue -- always simmering in the background -- to the front burner of this election year.
Yet the politician who has done the most to bring the immigration debate to a full boil is someone who doesn't even hold office in this country.
In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox predicted a future in which people will move freely across the 2,100-mile border between Mexico and the United States by 2010. A rapidly growing Mexican economy, Mr. Fox argued, would create a job and wage boom that would render illegal immigration irrelevant.
Though out of touch with current reality in the United States, Mr. Fox's vision for North America needs to be taken seriously, if only because it is already coming true in other parts of the world.
Predictably, talk of an open border with Mexico has riled a diverse set of voices. Mr. Bush immediately distanced himself from Mr. Fox's position by stating his doubts that the United States could ever tolerate open borders. Newsweek's Robert J. Samuelson singled out high Mexican immigration as contributing to ethnic balkanization and argued that the U.S. economy should not serve as a "sponge" for Mexico's poor.
Mr. Fox's statements certainly earn him low marks for political sensitivity to American concerns. Mexican illegal immigrants comprise more than half of the estimated 5 million undocumented workers in the United States, and recent pleas for a blanket amnesty for illegals cast doubt on the credibility of U.S. immigration authorities. Even in a booming economy, many illegal workers are unemployed. The many who work are often subjected to shameful conditions with few legal protections.
Yet critics of Mr. Fox's vision are missing the bigger point.
Immigrants deserve much credit for the spectacular U.S. economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has argued that sustaining economic growth and low inflation may require actually loosening immigration restrictions. In that regard, the United States is in an enviable position with respect to some of its major trading partners in Europe, which will need to import hundreds of thousands of workers in coming decades to keep their economies from shrinking.
