Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that would add 700 miles of border fencing and make illegal immigration a felony. Fox denounced the measure as shameful. His foreign relations secretary called it stupid and underhanded.

?How many of us don't have a relative in the United States, working and trying to make a living?? said Rodrigo Iván Cortés Jiménez, a deputy in the lower house and a member of its commission on foreign affairs.

?It's about image, and they have a distorted image,? he said of U.S. lawmakers. ?The contributions of Mexicans in the United States, who are making their best effort, generating lots of wealth, are not known.?

The immigration bill, expected to reach the Senate in February, has no provision for allowing temporary Mexican workers ? a further slap, in Fox's view. He and President Bush agree on the need for a guest worker program.

Fox cannot seek re-election next year, and his legacy may rest in part on his pledges to secure an agreement with the United States to grant legal status to the millions of Mexicans living and working illegally north of the border.

So last week he turned to the political operative who helped him topple the nation?s longtime ruling party to win the presidency in 2000.

Rob Allyn helped George W. Bush defeat Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas in 1994. Three years later, Allyn saw another potential winner in Fox, then governor of Guanajuato state. He agreed to join Fox's fledgling presidential campaign, but only in secret.

For three years, Allyn worked clandestinely, helping craft Fox's message of change, as well as his TV commercials, his polling and his wardrobe. Allyn made dozens of trips to Mexico, traveling under one of three pseudonyms.

Fox, of the National Action Party (PAN), came from behind to defeat Francisco Labastida of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had ruled Mexico for seven decades.

During Mexico's official campaign season in the first six months of 2000, Allyn worked with Penn, Schoen & Berland, a polling and political consulting firm. They operated Democracy Watch, a nonpartisan group hired by Mexicans to conduct national exit polls as a hedge against election fraud.

Their secret role in the Fox campaign was revealed a week after the July 2 election by the Dallas Morning News.

Allyn told the newspaper he hid his work for Fox because he didn't want to be a political liability. Mexicans are sensitive to foreign interference, especially involving the United States.

?Basically, for three years I'd go home from my real job to a secret job,? he told the paper. ?I led a second life for that period.?

Allyn, who also worked on the Bush presidential campaigns, now faces a bigger challenge with the migration issue. Demands to stem illegal immigration are growing louder in the United States as Mexican and Central American workers spread across the country.

Debates in states such as Minnesota, South Carolina and Virginia now echo arguments heard in California before voters in 1994 passed Proposition 187, which barred illegal immigrants from most public services, including schooling.

?Our focus is on public opinion, which influences policy outcomes in Congress,? said Allyn, 46, who grew up in Huntington Beach, Calif., and moved to Texas when he was in high school. ?There is a huge misperception among the U.S. public about Mexico.?

Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said Allyn's message should be that Mexicans have sunk roots deep in their U.S. neighborhoods and that they contribute more to U.S. society through their work, taxes and families than they take away in public services.

Allyn, whose firm is owned by global PR giant Fleishman-Hillard, based in St. Louis, said he'd like to talk about the two country's trade ties and the importance of Mexican labor to the U.S. economy, as well as survey U.S.attitudes toward Mexico and Mexicans.

Fox's former foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, said such a task will require more than a public relations firm. ?Allyn is perfectly competent,? said Castañeda. The two men worked together during the Fox campaign. ?But the Mexican government has to use the embassy, the 45 consulates, and they all need to be speaking with the media, debating these issues and taking the case to the American people.?