FRESNO, California (Reuters) -- Mexican President Vicente Fox promised
                  Mexican immigrants living in the United States that his government will put in
                  place absentee voting mechanisms by the next presidential elections in 2006.

                  "I express my will and my commitment to work so that in the 2006 presidential
                  elections, you can fully exercise your vote from a foreign country," Fox said in a
                  speech late on Thursday before 3,000 flag-waving Mexicans in the new convention
                  center in the California city of Fresno.

                  Fox, who took office in December, was on his second day of a two-day tour
                  through California, home to an estimated four million Mexicans. He invited his
                  countrymen to take advantage of new laws that allow Mexicans who become
                  U.S. citizens to continue voting in their homeland.

                  "I have come today to invite you to participate in the change that Mexico is
                  living," said Fox, speaking in Spanish.

                  He became the first Mexican president in 71 years to come from an opposition
                  party when his conservative National Action party (PAN) knocked the
                  Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) out of power in landmark elections last
                  July.

                  Mexican workers in California told Fox that what they most wanted was a
                  general amnesty on the part of the U.S. government, granting residency to
                  immigrants living illegally in the country after crossing the border.

                  On December 21, then-President Bill Clinton signed into law a limited amnesty
                  for undocumented immigrants with a family relationship with someone legally
                  residing in the U.S. An estimated five million immigrants from all nations live in
                  the U.S. illegally.

                  Maria Pineda, an immigrant who has lived in the United States since 1987 and
                  who spoke before Fox, called for amnesty. "This great country has become rich
                  off the sweat of millions of migrant workers," she said.

                     Copyright 2001 Reuters.