MEXICO CITY (By G. Robert Hillman And Alfredo Corchado, Dallas Morning News) November 21, 2004 - They were headed north, 10 men from the Mexican state of Guerrero, to Ciudad Juarez with a few pictures and other belongings - and just enough money to buy their way across the U.S. border on the lure of construction jobs in South Carolina.

"Luckily, in November, the weather has cooled off," said Hernan Flores Castillo, who was leaving three children behind to rejoin an employer who had beckoned him and his pals. "If we had papers we wouldn't worry about the heat or snow. I just want to come back and forth, do my work and return home to my children and wife."

It is an everyday story now along the expansive U.S. border with Mexico and one of the emerging story lines of the second Bush administration - immigration.

"We intend to make it an important item," said President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove.

Bush arrived in Santiago, Chile, Friday night for the annual meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders, and he will confer Sunday with Mexican President Vicente Fox on immigration and other border issues.

Within a few days of his re-election, Bush had begun to re-engage Mexico and Congress on the immigration issue, which was at the top of his agenda before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks squelched nearly all talk of more open borders.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge were in Mexico City last week, pledging a new commitment to the issue. And already at the White House, Bush has met privately with Sen. John McCain, the maverick Arizona Republican who has proposed his own overhaul of U.S. immigration law.

Should McCain join the president on a new immigration initiative and team up with a prominent Democratic senator, immigration advocates suggest it could finally move forward in a Congress that has been sharply divided over the issue.

"I would play any role that I can in order to get this done," McCain said in an interview, adding: "This issue is not going away. It's worsening. Every year, it's worsening - more people coming across, more people die in the desert, greater strain on our health-care facilities, devastation of our borders, more crime."

Still, many conservative Republicans, particularly in the House, are opposed to any immigration overhaul that might offer legal status to illegal immigrants. And there is opposition from some liberal Democrats as well. So, at best, analysts see an uphill fight in Congress, but one the president, buoyed by a substantial increase in Hispanic support at the polls, appears eager to pursue with renewed vigor.

"It's one of those legacy issues that can help define a presidency," said a Bush campaign adviser familiar with the Bush-McCain meeting.

"It's early in this," the adviser said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, warning of untold pitfalls ahead. "There are people opposed to it on the left and the right."

Still, the adviser indicated McCain would be the "lead carrier" of Bush's proposal next year in Congress.

One congressional avenue being explored by various parties is partnering with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., long an advocate of immigration reform.

The senator helped push the president's No Child Left Behind education initiative through Congress three years ago, though he has since been critical of its funding and implementation. Still, advocates see his support as critical for any sweeping changes in immigration law.

"If the president puts some muscle into it, if he works on a bipartisan basis, I think immigration reform is possible within the next Congress," said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. "He's got more political capital than he's ever had."

Bush outlined an immigration initiative in January that would allow immigrants from other countries and undocumented workers already in the United States to apply for three-year temporary worker stints.

The temporary workers, often called "guest workers," would have to return home after three years but could renew their permits. They would have the same rights as U.S. workers, once steps were taken to ensure their jobs are not being sought by Americans.

At the same time, the president said he would seek an unspecified "reasonable annual increase" in the number of "green cards" for permanent U.S. residence.

Throughout the country, there are as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, perhaps half of them from Mexico, immigration analysts estimate. But Bush has provided few details on exactly how he might put them on a path to legal status, or how quickly.

His proposal "went in the right direction, but he pulled his punches," Sharry said. "He was heavy on guest workers and short on the path to permanent residency."

Yet for some Republican critics, Bush has been much too aggressive on the issue.

"It is not appropriate to reward those who have broken the law by granting them legal status and allowing them to remain in the United States," Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., and 21 other representatives wrote Powell and Ridge. "Doing so only encourages further illegal immigration."

In Mexico City, though, Fox has not been shy in his eagerness to tackle immigration in the wake of Bush's re-election.

"We've been waiting for the U.S. election to go through," Fox told reporters. "Now it's over ... and I think that now is the big opportunity that we conclude with this issue."

Mexican officials are cautiously optimistic Bush can push his immigration initiative, or at least major parts of it, through Congress next year - before the 2006 presidential campaign heats up in Mexico and the 2006 midterm congressional campaigns are at full throttle in the United States.

But Pamela Falk, a Latin American policy expert at the City University of New York, warned: "Getting passage of an accord will not be easy."

Al Gonzales, the White House legal counsel whom Bush has tapped to be attorney general in the second term, will surely "raise the profile" of immigration reform, she said, but losing Powell as secretary of state could "set back negotiations and credibility with the U.S. Congress."

Bush could well "move forward on immigration," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, director of the Mexico Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. But he added, "It requires some heavy political lifting.

"Karl Rove will ultimately make a decision based on a Hispanic voter political calculation," Peschard-Sverdrup added. "This is about 2008 now."

And it is not just about the 2008 presidential election. It is also about forging an enduring Republican majority, a renewed project of Rove in the second term.

Bush's support among Hispanics rose to 44 percent in 2004, up 9 percentage points from 2000, though some Hispanic leaders question the rise. And with rapidly rising numbers of Hispanic voters, parity with Democrats among Hispanics would all but cement an overall Republican majority.

In this case, the Bush campaign adviser said, "Good policy is good politics."

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