MEXICO CITY -- President Vicente Fox has joined a wave of other Mexican officials in rejecting a U.S. congressional committee's call to link an agreement on immigration to U.S. investment in Mexico's state-run oil company.

Fox said his administration has made a priority of reaching an immigration deal with the United States. "But in no way will it accept negotiating that agreement in exchange for the opening of Petroleos Mexicanos to foreign investment," he said in a statement released by his office.

The Mexican media has launched a barrage of criticism against the move by the House International Relations Committee.

The committee measure narrowly approved Thursday on votes by the Republican majority says that any accord on immigration issues with Mexico should include an agreement to open Mexico's state oil company Pemex to U.S. investment.

It was a nonbinding "sense of Congress" amendment to a broad State Department funding measure and still faces approval by both houses of Congress.

Nearly ignored in the United States, the amendment outraged Mexicans. Mexico celebrates the 1938 nationalization of Pemex as symbol of national independence and state control of the company is written into the constitution.

Sen. Demetrio Sodi told the newspaper Reforma that the vote "is a sample of the ignorance of the U.S. legislators, of their arrogance and imperialist vision."

Congressman Gustavo Carvajal, head of the Mexican Congress' Foreign Relations Committee, asked sarcastically if the U.S. congressmen would let Mexicans visit the United States without prior visas or passports -- something Mexico has long allowed U.S. citizens.

Fox said his government has sponsored reforms of Pemex -- once listed among the world's most inefficient companies -- "to modernize its infrastructure and make its administration more transparent."

But he repeated that "in this government, Pemex will not be privatized nor sold."

Both President Bush and Fox have advocated an immigration agreement to reform a situation in which some major U.S. industries clearly depend on illegal, often exploited Mexican workers -- whose earnings have become a significant element in the Mexican economy.