An Open Letter to His Excellency, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico

Your Excellency,

Yesterday you came to our country to meet with our President.  At the end of your meeting, you deliberately involved yourself in the politics of our county without invitation, and discussed some things of which you were obviously not informed.  I do not blame you for this, for unfortunately neither our President, his Attorney General, nor his Director of Homeland Security have bothered to read the Arizona law, so why should I expect you to have done so.

Let me try to generally inform you of some basics of the law of which you are obviously ignorant:

1.  No one can be stopped and asked for identification based solely on their appearance.  The law mandates that Law Enforcement Personnel must have prior "legal contact" with persons before requesting that they prove citizenship.  Unlike the laws in Mexico, that means the Police Officer must have probable cause to stop and detain the person before he can ask for any type of verification of citizenship.

2.  The United States Immigration laws mandate that resident aliens carry their federal identification cards "green cards" with them at all times and present them upon request by any law enforcement agency.  It is a federal misdemeanor to fail to have or produce a "green card" upon request.  The Arizona law is supportive of the federal law in that it also makes it a misdemeanor in Arizona to be without a valid residence card.

3.  If the person detained provides a valid state or federally issued identification, they will not be further asked to provide verification or detained.  Only if the person cannot provide valid identification will they be further detained and their legal status checked with Immigration.

Basically sir, no one in the United States legally has anything to fear from Arizona's new law, as they have nothing to fear from the current law of the United States.  It is only those who break the law by being in the United States illegally who have anything to fear.

In your remarks yesterday after meeting with the President, you stated that you wanted to create a "safer border, a border that will unite us instead of dividing us."

Although horribly oxymoronic, it appeared to be a valid sentiment on your part.  So, let us discuss then our common border.

For almost a thousand years, there has been a proverb that is repeated in many languages in many lands.  It says simply that "Good fences make good neighbors".

From the Mexican border every year, comes tons of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs into the United States.  Drug Cartels operating on both sides of the border are kidnapping and murdering innocent people in order to maintain the fear that they use to control their "trade routes".   Inter-cartel murders are uncountable.  This violence is spilling across the border.

As a Texan, I always enjoyed "crossing the border" on day trips into Juarez, Acuna, Nuevo Laredo and Matamoras.  While I was in San Diego, California it was always fun to travel into Tijuana for the bull fights, dog races and good food.

Today, I would not cross the border for fear of the corrupt police and drug gangs.

I can drive along the road that follows the Rio Grande and see United States Border Patrol and Immigration Agents every few miles.  I look across the river and see nothing, except perhaps the occasional person waiting to wade across the river.

Excellency, you say you want a safer border.  You say you want a border that unites us.  The solution lies with you.

You must create a society where people don't have to leave in order to escape grinding poverty.  You must protect your own people by putting troops on the border to stop the drug violence and chase out the drug gangs from your cities.  You must work with the United States in stopping illegal immigrants from crossing the border into the United States.

If you want Mexico to be a good neighbor of the United States, you must maintain your side of the fence.  Condemning us for the mote in our eye while ignoring the plank sticking out of yours accomplishes nothing.