From Mexico’s La Chronica de Hoy translated on the indispensible site Watching America:
President George W. Bush returned this week from a trip to Europe, where the only countries that received him well were Albania and Bulgaria. Ironically, these countries may have made him forget the nightmare that awaited in Washington, where, against all predictions and against his own party, he is trying to revive migration reform – the only potentially positive legacy of his two-term administration.
The cause of migration reform is almost lost and will almost certainly not become a reality because the Republicans – with the exception of Bush and his entourage – disagree with him. Nevertheless, the President has defied reform’s opponents by assuring us that he will soon sign the evolving-bill into law. An utterance that has been interpreted – depending on one’s taste – as a threat, a good joke or the babbling of a fool.
In him, we are confronting the least popular President to lead the United States in modern times. He is an elected leader who is supported by only 30 percent of the population. A commander-in-chief who is fighting – and losing – two wars: in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with which no one seems to agree. Even worse, he finds himself in the middle of a political battle with the very conservatives who put him in the White House and cannot seem to wait to see him gone.
One mustn’t forget that the conservatives, who for decades have opposed changes in immigration like they have their primary enemy, Communism, first found a substitute for Communism in Islam. Today, conservatives have found the enemy in the millions of mostly Mexican undocumented workers who live in the country and who President Bush wants to legalize, reckoning that the migrants constitute a problem, but at the same time a necessity for the United States . At least on this last point, we agree with them.
For more of the view from Mexico, read it all…
NOTE: We’ve updated this with the latest re-edited version of this piece on Watching America. If you’ve never visited that site you need to so CLICK HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.