Failure has been the hallmark both of U.S.
immigration policy and of attempts to reform
it in recent years. In 2006 and 2007, bipartisan
efforts at comprehensive immigration reform
(CIR) legislation failed in Washington. Separate
bills of more limited scope, focused on the status
of undocumented students (the Dream Act) and
of agricultural workers (AgJOBS), have also been
introduced but have failed to come to a vote. At
the same time, workplace raids, an increasingly
fortified border, and state and local policies
targeting immigrants have advanced. According
to the Department of Homeland Security,
however, since 2000 the unauthorized immigrant
population has grown on average by 470,000 per
year, reaching 11.8 million in January 2007.25
!e main piece of federal legislation to become
law in this period was the Secure Fence Act of
2006—a measure that has served more to impede
rather than to advance cooperation with Mexico
in establishing control of immigration and the
border. !e Calderón administration, with four
years remaining in power, still has not had the
opportunity to substantively engage the United
States on migration. !is fact contrasts with the
breakthrough achieved in bilateral cooperation
in fighting drug trafficking, in the form of the
Mérida Initiative. Immigration thus remains a
complex of unresolved issues on the agenda for the