Dobbs: Mexico's president shows blatant hypocrisy

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Mexican President Felipe Calderon Sunday demanded the United States surrender its sovereignty, abandon the rule of law and accede to Mexico's inherent supremacy.

In his state of the union address to the Mexican nation, Calderon established his imperialistic imperatives: "I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico. And, for this reason, the government action on behalf of our countrymen is guided by principles, for the defense and protection of their rights."

Calderon protested the U.S. government's increased raids on illegal employers of illegal alien employees and work site enforcement. In what is little more than a faint nod to the Bush administration's responsibility to enforce U.S. immigration law, the Department of Homeland Security had planned to send out notices to employers from the Social Security Administration informing them of non-matching records between an employee's name and Social Security number. These employers would then be forced to resolve any discrepancy within 90 days or be required to dismiss the employee or face up to $10,000 in fines for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

But then, ethnocentric advocacy groups and some labor unions, trying to bolster their membership, sued to stop the crackdown on hiring illegal alien workers. A federal judge in California last week issued a temporary restraining order blocking the plan, giving a victory to the AFL-CIO, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center, all of which brought the suit alleging DHS exceeded its authority in making the rule.

That U.S. District Court judge ruled as if she were an employee of the Mexican government, rather than the U.S. government. Homeland Security was simply enforcing existing immigration laws. Are we not a nation that follows the rule of law? If not, we're no country at all.

Calderon must have been delighted by the judge's decision. Calderon, like his predecessors, Carlos Salinas and Vicente Fox, has failed miserably to establish policies that would create jobs for the Mexican people and to eliminate shameful, unchecked corruption and incompetence in the Mexican government.

Even by Mexico's standards, Calderon's blatant hypocrisy is breathtaking. Calderon told the Washington Post more than a year ago that he believes laws are not a relative concept, nor subject to a personal concept of justice. Calderon declared a big difference between himself and his rival for the Mexican presidency, Manuel Lopez Obrador, was this: "I believe in the rule of law." Obviously he does not believe in the rule of U.S. law on U.S. soil.

Calderon can't have it both ways. He cannot fail his citizens at home and then act as the Great Imperialist Protector of his citizens who are driven by poverty and corruption to enter the United States illegally. The United States provides Mexico with an annual surplus of $65 billion in trade, an estimated $25 billion in remittances from Mexican citizens living and working here illegally, and at least another $25 billion generated by the illegal drug trade across our southern border.

But it is President Bush and this Congress who should be most embarrassed, because they are failing to assert rights for Americans in their own country, rights far short of those demanded by Calderon for his citizens living illegally in our nation.