By GINGER THOMPSON
 
MEXICO CITY, Nov. 7 - In meetings with the United States this week, Mexico will urge the Bush administration to pay more attention to Latin America in its second term and to move forward on proposals that would give legal status to millions of illegal migrants.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, will travel to Mexico on Monday for meetings of the United States-Mexico Binational Commission. It will be Mr. Powell's first foreign trip since President Bush's re-election last week. The commission is scheduled to discuss a range of issues, including trade, border security and the fight against drug trafficking. Migration tops Mexico's agenda.

Gerónimo Gutiérrez, the under secretary for North America in Mexico's Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview that Mexico had cooperated with the United States in its efforts to prevent terrorism and curb drug trafficking and on programs to stop the smuggling of migrants across the border. He suggested that it was time for the United States to reciprocate that spirit of cooperation.

"For us, this meeting represents an opportunity to accelerate the pace of the bilateral agenda, especially migration," Mr. Gutiérrez said. "It's time for the United States to establish new mechanisms to deal with migration."

Mr. Bush, whose election was bolstered by increasing support from Hispanic voters, has promised sweeping immigration changes since the beginning of his first term, when he proclaimed Mexico one of the United States' most important allies. Last January, Mr. Bush sent Congress a proposal that would give temporary work permits to illegal migrants working in the United States.

Authorities estimate there are eight million illegal immigrants in the United States, more than half of them Mexican. Because of the estimated $14 billion that Mexicans in the United States sent home last year - making remittances the country's second most important source of income after oil - those immigrants are a powerful constituency for Mexico's president, Vicente Fox. He has made immigration change his chief foreign policy priority.

The United States, however, has so far failed to deliver on its promises for immigration change. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration set aside the migration agenda to focus on the effort to prevent terrorism, and later on the invasion of Iraq. But Mr. Bush promised that if he was re-elected, he would get migration talks back on track and push for his guest-worker proposal, which has drawn criticism from Republicans and Democrats.

At the meeting of the United States-Mexico Binational Commission, Mexico intends to challenge the Bush administration to do just that.

Mr. Fox raised the issue of migration in a congratulatory telephone call to Mr. Bush last week.

"What I discussed with President Bush is the fact that the next years represent a window of opportunity, given that neither of our countries will have elections," Mr. Fox told reporters at a meeting among Latin American leaders last week. "Relations with the United States are excellent, deep, friendly, productive, and we have to be optimistic that we will take advantage of this one-year window of opportunity we have."

Optimism, however, has faded across Latin America since the beginning of Mr. Bush's first term. The region has tilted decidedly left, moving away from the United States' foreign policies and free market changes. In Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Uruguay, voters frustrated by vast disparities between the rich and poor, soaring crime, systematic corruption and impunity have turned out to support leftist leaders whose campaigns questioned - and in some cases flatly rejected - the thinking from Washington and Wall Street.

Mr. Bush's popularity across the region dropped significantly after the invasion of Iraq. Mexico was one of the decisive votes against the invasion at the United Nations Security Council. Only the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Honduras have sent troops to Iraq.

But in a meeting among 19 Latin American leaders last week, most expressed an interest in strengthening relations with Washington. Political analysts also have said that Mr. Bush's victory is the best hope for real progress on a range of pending negotiations, including the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and migration changes. A second-term president, whose party controls Congress, they contend, will be in a better position to push through changes than John Kerry would have been.

"I think this is the better option for Mexico and Latin America," said Isabel Studer, of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, a research group. "If Kerry would have been elected with a Republican Congress, we would have had four years of paralysis. Bush will have more political leverage to push for issues that are important to us."