Calderon Go Back To Mexico!

Washington Times

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon ought to know a lot about illegal immigrant abuse. His country has one of the worst migrant human-rights records in the world.

During his state visit last week, Mr. Calderon repeatedly - and with support and encouragement from the White House and congressional Democrats - made his opinions known on a variety of American domestic issues, including immigration and gun control. He took particular aim at Arizona's new law concerning illegal aliens, absurdly describing it as "violating the human rights of all people."

Criticism from Mexico on immigration issues is nothing new, but rarely has it been so bold, and such salvos have never been launched from U.S. soil. It might be considered bad manners except for the fact that the foreign leader was promoting President Obama's domestic agenda.

Boiled down in simplest terms, it is hypocritical for Mr. Calderon to criticize Arizona's law when his country has similar or more severe statutes. Article 67 of Mexico's Population Law mirrors Arizona's law by requiring federal, state and municipal officials to "demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country, before attending to any [other] issues." Mexico's constitution gives the president authority to summarily expel both legal and illegal aliens without due process. When CNN's Wolf Blitzer confronted the Mexican president with some of these contradictions, Mr. Calderon was oblivious to the double standard. Asked about Mexico's policy for dealing with illegals sneaking in from Central America looking for work, Mr. Calderon quipped, "If somebody [does] that without permission, we send [them] back." If only Mr. Obama had such enlightened views.

Illegals in Mexico are lucky if deportation is all that happens to them. An April 2010 report from Amnesty International entitled "Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico" called the trip from Central America to the border with the United States "one of the most dangerous in the world." According to Amnesty researcher Rupert Knox, "Migrants in Mexico are facing a major human-rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses." The report says that "Mexico's irregular migrants are condemned to a life on the margins, vulnerable to exploitation by criminal gangs and corrupt officials and largely ignored by many of those in authority who should be protecting them from human-rights abuses." Common abuses committed by Mexican officials include extortion, excessive use of force and violence against women. Arizona is a paradise by comparison.

Mr. Calderon's government recently issued a travel advisory about the "dangers" Mexicans might face in Arizona, but being there is much safer than staying home. In February, the State Department issued a travel advisory regarding Mexico that noted drug gang conflicts resembling "small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades." The circular also warns against robbery, kidnapping and other relatively common crimes. Meanwhile, gang-related beheadings are virtually unknown in Arizona, which is more than Mr. Calderon can claim for his own country.

America doesn't need self-righteous lectures from officials from the developing world. Mexico has its own problems, including pervasive violence, openly armed drug cartels, pollution, widespread institutional corruption and lack of economic opportunity. If Mexicans are flooding north over our border, it is for many very good reasons. Mr. Calderon should stick to trying to fix his own basket-case country, if he can.

Here is a very good retort to Calderon's hypocritical speech:

Stinko de Mayo

Washington Times

On May 5, five students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., were sent home for wearing clothing featuring the American flag. Their offense: trespassing on Mexican heritage during Cinco de Mayo. Administrators called the flag-wearing "incendiary" and likely to cause violence. The school district overrode the decision, and the boys were allowed to return to school. In response yesterday, about 200 students staged a walkout carrying Mexican flags. The question is: Who taught these kids to hate America so much?

There should be nothing disrespectful about the U.S. flag to Americans of Mexican descent or to any other immigrant group. Teaching children that their heritage is at odds with their citizenship promotes disunity and divisiveness. While the high school's administrators may have been responding to a real public-safety threat, that threat was the product of their failure to instill a sense of national pride in their students.

Identity politics has become such a staple of public life and education in recent decades that incidents like this illustrate the poisonous effects it has on the nation. In the past, immigrant groups would attempt to outdo each other in demonstrating their patriotic attachment to the country that gave them safety, opportunity and freedom. Today, immigrant activist groups think patriotism is at best an inconvenience, at worst a sellout. They have replaced the melting pot with hardening battle lines in a struggle for power.

It is odd that Cinco de Mayo has become a focus of conflict. In Mexico, it is a relatively unimportant, mainly local holiday. But in the United States, it has become the de facto Mexican nationalist day, a far cry from its origins in the 1980s as a marketing gimmick by beer importers to sell brews that taste best with lime wedges.

This is only the latest instance of Old Glory being forced into the closet. In 2006, a Colorado school seeking to placate Mexican nationalists banned the American flag. After a mass student protest, Mexican flags were banned as well. In 2008, Dos Palos, Calif., high school student Jake Shelly was forced to remove a red, white and blue tie-dyed American-flag T-shirt he had worn to school because he was in violation of a dress code banning "shirts/blouses that promote specific races, cultures, or ethnicities." In 2007, students at Hobbton High School in Sampson County, N.C., were not allowed to wear American-flag-themed clothes on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks because of a general school prohibition on garments featuring flags. The superintendent of schools said that "educators didn't want to be forced to pick and choose which flags should be permissible."

Not all flags are created equal. Some flags may be fashion statements, but the American flag is the patriotic symbol of the nation in which we live. This is why the American flag flies outside schools as opposed to, say, Zimbabwe's. Schools should spend less time telling patriotic students not to cause a ruckus simply by wearing the national colors and more time teaching the kids who are offended by the American flag how wrongheaded their views are. This might require teachers and administrators to begin making value judgments and moral choices for the benefit of the children they are charged with educating. The Stars and Stripes should be a proud statement of unity for all.

Robocop's Comment: