A STATE visit by Felipe Calderón, the president of Mexico, to Washington has been dominated by the issues of illegal immigration and the drug war that has killed some 22,700 Mexicans over the past four years.
Mr Calderón met President Barack Obama at the White House yesterday. The Mexican leader and his wife, Margarita Zavala, were to be guests of honour at a state dinner – only the second given by the Obamas – last night.
In an address to the US Congress today, Mr Calderón is expected to criticise Arizona’s “papers please” immigration law and pledge to brake emigration by providing economic opportunity at home.
“We will retain our firm rejection to criminalise migration so that people that work and provide things to this nation will be treated as criminals,” Mr Calderón said at a joint press conference with Mr Obama. “And we oppose firmly the SB 1070 Arizona law,” he added, calling it “partial and discriminatory”.
The law, which was passed last month, requires Arizona police to demand identity papers from anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. Opponents say it legalises racial profiling. Ten per cent of the US population are of Mexican descent, and most of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US are Mexican.
Mr Obama said the Arizona law “has the potential of being applied in a discriminatory fashion ... it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants being harrassed or arrested.”
The US president said he had asked the justice department “to look very carefully at the language of this law to see whether it comports both with our core values and existing legal standards, as well as the fact that the federal government is ultimately the one charged with immigration policy”.
Mr Obama said the law “expresses some of the frustrations that the American people have had in not fixing a broken immigration system and, frankly, the failures of the federal government to get this done”.
He reiterated his own support for comprehensive immigration reform, saying it must “create an orderly border”, ensure that businesses do not actively recruit undocumented workers to avoid paying minimum wage, and see to it that those who entered the country illegally pay back taxes, learn English and “get to the back of the line”.
He nonetheless held out hope for illegal immigrants “to become legal residents and ultimately citizens of this country”. Mr Calderón has staked his presidential term on fighting organised crime in Mexico. Through the Merida initiative, the US has budgeted more than $1 billion to train and equip Mexican security forces.
Mr Obama acknowledged Mexican complaints. “It is absolutely true that US demand for drugs helps to drive this public safety crisis within Mexico, and so we’ve got an obligation not to drive the demand side of the equation,” he said. Mexico says US arms dealers are also fuelling the drug wars on its territory. “We have to deal with the southbound flows from the US of both weapons and cash that helps to empower these drug cartels,” Mr Obama said.
