March 19, 2001

The Fox California road-show a sellout.

President Vicente Fox's first official visit to California scheduled for March 21, 22, and 23^rd, which includes stops in San Jose, Fresno, Davis, Los Angels and Santa Ana, is generating a frenzy of interest.

The luncheon in Los Angeles sold out from one day to the next with hundreds of others wanting to attend on stand-by. Over one-thousand will attend the lunch where Fox will give a speech. President Fox is also scheduled to have a private dinner with Governor Davis, whom he has already met - once after Fox was elected, and then at the inauguration on December 1, 2000.

Other stops include the opening of a US-Mexico trade office in Santa Ana in Orange County, a visit in San Jose with high tech companies and local leaders, and a visit to the University of California Davis. Additional stops will be in Fresno and the Central Valley, both high intensity agricultural regions employing significant numbers of both legal and undocumented farm workers, a large proportion from Mexico.

Fox's goal is to build on the "Guanajuato Proposal" as the February 16, 2001, meeting and discussions with President Bush have been dubbed. Fox will be pushing the agendas dealing with trade, immigration and technology discussed with Bush.

The significance of Fox's visit to California a state which is home to the largest number of Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants, coupled with the huge trade partnership between California and Mexico, underline the reasons as to why California first and not Texas.

Topics sure to come up with Davis and other state officials will be immigration, and drugs. California is home to a number of immigration reform groups, which promote stricter controls of the US-Mexico border, including placing of military personnel along the border, along with the miles of fences already erected in failed attempts to keep immigrants out of the country.

Drugs is another sore point with many Californians, who blame Mexico for much of the drug problems in the state, since it is believed that around 70 per cent of all cocaine enters through Mexico. Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jorge Castañeda, who will be accompanying Fox, is on record as supporting the legalization of drugs as the most effective method of stopping smuggling and ending the hold of drug barons.

Recently Mexico City's police chief also publicly stated his support for the idea. And when Fox was asked how he felt on the subject, he endorsed the idea with the caveat that it would have to be a world wide agreement otherwise it would not work for singular countries to legalize drugs.

These ideas are sure to stir controversy in the US and provide fuel to anti-Mexico sectors, who always look for opportunities to underline differences.

On the positive side is the business fact that Mexico is now California's number one trading partner, leaving Canada and Japan behind. And from an immigration point, California needs to control its border while at the same time needs the labor from Mexico for its 22 billion dollar annual agricultural industry.