Family Unity

So President Bush was in Mexico last week, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon criticized U.S. immigration policies, and by extension, Bush -- even though Bush has actually attempted to liberalize immigration laws but been stymied by his own party. But forget your views on immigration (illegal and otherwise) and U.S.-Mexico border patrol for a second. The part of the story (as seen in the Washington Post) that startled me was this:

During U.S. President George W. Bush´s visit to Mexico last week, Calderón said he has relatives "working in vegetable fields" and restaurants in the United States. "They probably handle what you eat," he said.

In the interview Friday, Calderón said between "five and 20" of his relatives have migrated and that he does not know their current immigration statuses or whether they entered legally. The relatives include "cousins, uncles and in-laws," he said.

Let me get this straight: You, Felipe Calderon -- the president of your country, and therefore one of the most powerful men of Mexico -- have relatives who are doing so poorly that they're reduced to leaving their homes and travelling to the U.S. to work as miserably paid vegetable washers? And you don't even know if they immigrated legally or if they had to smuggle themselves over like so much chattel?

I haven't made up my mind about changing the laws governing how we treat illegal immigrants. But it seems to me that Calderon doesn't have a leg to stand on, morally. I mean, by his own admission, his relatives are so impoverished they had to leave the country to find work -- and he did nothing to help them. I'm not saying that he had to make them his top Cabinet officials, but surely he has a friend who'll give them a job as a waiter or a secretary or something???

Things are so bad for them, that they have to leave the country -- and Calderon cared so little about their fate that he didn't even bother to see if they had a ride to get there or if they'd have to hike their asses across hundreds of miles of desert, and he didn't have the decency to see where they ended up?

Damn, that's cold, man,