Bush's Latin America trip: pushing Congress for amnesty by August.

President Bush wound up his six-day tour of five Latin American countries--Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico--with a March 13 meeting with newly elected Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Protests dogged much of his tour, with opposition to U.S. border enforcement and deportation of illegal aliens being a major focus of Latin American protesters and presidents alike.

In Mexico, President Calderon continued his criticism of the U.S. proposal to build several hundred miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, suggesting that the United States instead send billions of dollars of "investment" to his country. According to Calderon, "we may more truly stop the migration by building a kilometer of highway in Michoac or Zacatecas than 10 kilometers of walls" on the border. He also urged Bush to push more aggressively for a "temporary worker" program that would decriminalize millions of illegal aliens in the United States.

President Bush strongly favors such a "temporary worker" program, which critics have noted is merely a euphemism for a de facto amnesty that will attract millions more illegal immigrants, as previous amnesties have done. "Because we're working together, I believe we will make good progress on this important issue," President Bush told Calderon.