The Apology Tour Comes Home!

A couple of posts ago I said that I felt I was about to encounter a little English girl in a blue dress and a talking white rabbit sporting a pocket watch. Well the Wonderland feeling is even more acute now as I witnessed the verbal gyrations of one Felipe Calderon.

The day after his arrival, his program began with a speech to a joint session of Congress in which he trashed the United States in general and Arizona’s new law in particular. Needless to say, that led to rapturous applause on the part of the Democrats and a stony silence on the part of the GOP members present.

All this came hard on the heels of the welcoming ceremony at the White House the day before. In his speech then, Senor Calderon strongly criticized Arizona's controversial immigration law, following his arrival in Washington to attend a state dinner in his honor

Speaking through a translator at the welcoming ceremony, Calderon called for "a border that will unite us instead of divide us," and then noted that Mexicans are "still living here in the shadows." He said the Arizona law "is forcing our people to face discrimination."

In the joint press conference after the two heads of state talked, Calderon again turned to the law, saying his country rejects the criminalization of immigration.

Any President of the United States worthy of the title would not stand by idly and hear a foreign head of state trash an American state and its people. But Obama did and he even joined in the barrage when he stated he thinks the policy is misguided and again expressed that the Justice Department is close to submitting its examination of the law to see if it violates civil liberties or the Constitution.

Obama called the law, which makes it a state crime to be an illegal immigrant, a "misdirected expression of frustration with our immigration system that has raised concern in both countries," and later said he thinks it has "the potential of being applied in a discriminatory fashion."

Before his election in 2008 and afterwards Obama flew around the world apologizing for this country but now it seems he’s going to minimize his carbon footprint and simply carry on the “mea culpa” process without burning copious amounts of Jet-A. All he needs is a visiting dignitary as a straight man.

Then in the evening Calderon was interviewed on CNN by Wolf Blitzer who for once asked some very pertinent questions and got some truly amazing answers.

The dialog which follows speaks for itself:-

BLITZER: So if people want to come from Guatemala or Honduras or El Salvador or Nicaragua, they want to just come into Mexico, they can just walk in?

CALDERON: No. They need to fulfill a form. They need to establish their right name. We analyze if they have not a criminal precedent. And they coming into Mexico. Actually...

BLITZER: Do Mexican police go around asking for papers of people they suspect are illegal immigrants?

CALDERON: Of course. Of course, in the border, we are asking the people, who are you?

BLITZER: So in other words, if somebody sneaks in from Nicaragua or some other country in Central America, through the southern border of Mexico, they wind up in Mexico, they can go get a job...

CALDERON: No, no.

BLITZER: They can work.

CALDERON: If -- if somebody do that without permission, we send back -- we send back them.

BLITZER: You find them and you send them back?

CALDERON: Yes."

Just as a footnote to this illegal immigrant business, have you heard about the Pakistani who helped the Times Square bomber?

This gentleman entered the United States illegally in 1991 and took up residence in Boston, Massachusetts. There he applied to that city for a licence to drive a cab and even admitted he was here illegally. The police department took no action and so ever since he’s been driving people to, from and around Logan Airport from whence some 911 terrorists departed.

Note that he is not from Mexico or Guatemala and he did not come to wash dishes nor “to do jobs which most Americans won’t do”.

Even Lewis Carroll couldn’t make this stuff up.