"These are measures that will not lead to an adequate solution in the long term," Derbez said in a telephone news conference from Chicago. "They will not help solve the problem."

On Tuesday, the U.S. Border Patrol announced it was adding 1,700 new agents along the Mexican border this fiscal year, with Arizona getting more than 640 of them.

The new officers will boost the agency's total from 11,268 two months ago to almost 13,000.

Derbez said Mexicans would continue migrating to the United States as long there were offers of employment.

"We are going to insist, as we have insisted in the last five years, that the best solution for the security problem is an agreement that permits legal, ordered and safe migration," Derbez said.

U.S. President George W. Bush has proposed a temporary worker plan for foreigners, but it has met strong opposition in Congress.

The Mexican government estimates that 400,000 of its citizens leave their homeland each year; most go to the United States.

The Homeland Security Department reported that in 2004 it made about 1.2 million apprehensions of foreign nationals who were illegally in the United States and 92 percent of these were of Mexicans. Most were apprehended close to the U.S.-Mexican border.