As Vincente Fox, the President of Mexico, comes to speak to the state legislature, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing to allow the California national guard to be deployed along our state’s border with Fox’s country.
This will pit Fox against Schwarzenegger, as Fox has been a vocal critic of creating a wall or strong border enforcement between the two nations.
Tonight the Governor will have ample opportunity to hit a ‘home run’ with conservatives should he choose to take it — either by deciding not to attend Fox’s speech — or by taking the opportunity to vocalize public criticism of Fox for his hypocritical position. As Assemblyman Chuck DeVore points out below, Fox supports Mexico’s law making it a FELONY (punishable by two years in prison).
Well, we hope that the Governor will take this opportunity to use his office to give Fox a swift kick in the butt and use some public humiliation as a way to encourage "El Presidente" to stop criticizing the efforts of America to secure our borders.
I have to run, but I will leave you with some fine reading from Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, lifted (without permission) from his website, where Chuck details why he will NOT be attending Fox’s speech in person today:
May 24, 2006: Why I won’t be listening to the President of Mexico address the Legislature 
Thursday afternoon at 4:30 p.m., President Vicente Fox of Mexico will speak to a joint session of the California State Legislature. I won’t be there.
I won’t be there because I don’t want to hear President Fox tell me how we Americans need to change our laws. I don’t care to listen to him lecture us about how we should not secure our borders. I don’t give a whit about his opinion on how the U.S. should enforce its national sovereignty.
Instead, I have sent the Mexican government a letter outlining my objections to Mr. Fox’s visit. In the letter (included below with the press release I sent out today below that), I point out that the Mexican president’s position on illegal immigration is the height of hypocrisy as Mexico has militarized its southern border while making it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to violate its immigration laws. Furthermore, in Mexico it is a crime for a foreign national to even speak out about Mexican public policy. Foreigners have been deported for speaking their mind in Mexico, while in America, foreign nationals, many here illegally, held mass rallies without impunity.
Mexico’s refusal to reform its government, root out corruption, and educate its people are the prime reasons that drive millions of its citizens north, often in violation of U.S. immigration law. We must tend to our own needs first. Securing our border and defending our national sovereignty are our imperatives, not Mexico’s and certainly not Mr. Fox’s, and frankly, I don’t care what his wants and desires are about U.S. policy and law.
All the best,
Chuck DeVore, State Assemblyman, 70th District
Chuck’s letter to Vincente Fox:
His Excellency Vicente Fox
President of Mexico
c/o Mexican Consulate
Dear President Fox:
As elected representatives of California, we decry your recent statements criticizing the efforts in the United States to address the growing problem of illegal immigration. Foreign Secretary Derbez’s threats to sue if National Guard troops are sent to the border are unwelcome as well.
President Fox, we call upon you to deal with Mexico’s immigration issues before you deign to tell us how to reform our own laws. According to the National Human Rights Commission, Mexico uses some of the same methods for border security as the United States is considering. You have militarized your southern border. Furthermore, Mexican law calls for undocumented immigrants to be punished by up to two years in prison for illegally entering the country. You know all this, yet even as you encourage your citizens to work illegally in America you denounce American efforts to control our border while stopping immigrants illegally entering Mexico’s southern border.
When your citizens violate the law to trade life in Mexico for dreams in America, it is California residents who suffer in traffic-jammed freeways, overcrowded schools, and overburdened emergency rooms. It is California taxpayers who pay the $10.5 billion annual bill for your government’s failures to educate and employ its citizens, from the north to the south.
Just as Mexico has a right to secure its border and defend its national sovereignty, so too does America have that same right. Indeed, national sovereignty and border integrity are integral rights of all nation states and of the citizens therein.
We urge you to improve economic opportunity for all Mexican citizens through rule of law and access to education. America cannot continue to be your safety valve by which you send wave after wave of your citizens into our nation so as to relieve Mexico of the responsibility to educate and employ its own people.
Sincerely,
Chuck DeVore, Assemblyman, Seventieth District
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