CA: Mexican president wraps up U.S. trip with visits to LA leaders (Villaraigosa, Cardinal Mahony)

Mexican President Vicente Fox began wrapping up a U.S. visit Friday that anti-illegal immigration groups slammed as an attempt to influence congressional debate and immigrant supporters praised for recognizing Mexico's responsibility in a binational issue.

Fox's afternoon agenda in a city heavily influenced by Mexican culture included meetings with two fellow proponents of immigration reform, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Both have been high-profile supporters of marches that brought hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the streets.

Fox was also met by about 50 noisy protesters as he arrived downtown at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

"We want him to create jobs in Mexico, not come here looking for jobs for Mexicans here," said retiree Miguel Salazar, 78, a U.S. citizen originally from Mexico City.

On the four-day trip through Utah, Washington and California, Fox repeatedly has said that Mexico must regulate illegal immigration and must bolster its economy so would-be immigrants no longer see leaving as an economic necessity.

"It's good he is here communicating that Mexico has a stake in legalizing the flow of immigrants," said reform proponent Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "That does help his cause."

Earlier Friday, Fox told business leaders in Sacramento that an increasingly advanced Mexico offered investment opportunities for U.S. companies. But while Fox has touched on other issues, anti-illegal immigration groups argue his goal is to meddle in U.S. policy at a critical moment.

Fox's visit coincided with the Senate's passage Thursday of sweeping reform legislation that would tighten border security and create a path to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living here.

"He's a foreign government official lobbying in the United States. It's outrageous," said Mark Krikorian, head of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter immigration controls.

Fox praised the Senate in a Thursday address to a joint session of the California Legislature. But he was careful not to criticize parts of the bill he had previously protested, such as the building a 370-mile stretch of fence along key areas of the U.S.-Mexico border.

While he's been on U.S. soil, Fox also has steered clear of criticizing President Bush's plan to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops to the border.

Regardless of how the trip is interpreted in America, it provides Fox a fringe benefit: raising the profile of his party ahead of Mexico's presidential elections July 2.

It has come to my attention that ALL members of the JUDICIARY COMMITTEE will participate in the conference on the immigation bill..

Our battle is not with the Senators who voted on the "Senate Version" on the bill....the two bill are "oceans" apart.. with the house version being a MUCH BETTER BILL !! our battle is with the Senators who will go to conference with house.. which I just found out will be ALL MEMBERS of the Judiciary Committee and then some additional Senators yet to be named by Reid and Frist !!!...

WE NEED TO LET THESE FOLKS KNOW that we SUPPORT THE HOUSE VERSION !! NOT THE SENATE VERSION !!! now get er done !!

---> for now we can focus our efforts on the JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEMEBERS !!!

Arlen Specter Orrin G. Hatch Patrick J. Leahy Charles E. Grassley Edward M. Kennedy Jon Kyl Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Mike DeWine Hrbert Kohl Jeff Sessions Dianne Feinstein Lindsey Graham Russell D. Feingold John Cornyn Charles E. Schumer Sam Brownback Richard J. Durbin Tom Coburn

I have written an OPEN LETTER to the conferees and I encouge EVERYONE who cares about this to do the same.... feel free to copy/edit/distribute my letter..

MY OPEN LETTER TO CONFEREES

Cardinal Mahony is the Patron Saint of Pedophile Priest

And anybody who thinks Mahony is a sincere advocate for civil disobedience should talk to protesting pro-lifers: Squeamish about getting too close to them, Mahony won't even let them collect signatures for ballot propositions on his parishes' property. Notice, too, that he now speaks of compassion as more important than law — but when common sense and basic compassion dictated that he cooperate with the authorities in protecting children from pedophile priests, he didn't, arguing that his understanding of the law didn't technically require cooperation.

Michael Baker, an ex-priest caught molesting children, has testified about Mahony's hypocritical brand of I'm-above-the-law clericalism, recounting that after he offered to turn himself in to the police, Mahony's chancery lawyer said, "Should we call the police now?" And Mahony's response was, according to Baker, "No, no, no." Mahony then assigned Baker — over the subsequent 14 years — to several parishes near schools and children.

Jurors sitting on a case involving a pedophile priest in Stockton (a priest whose ministry partially overlapped with Mahony's tenure as bishop of Stockton) concluded that Mahony didn't even respect the rules of the courtroom. In their deliberations on the size of the settlement to the victims in the case, the jurors disregarded Mahony's testimony, sizing him up as a witness who lacked credibility. One juror told the press that he "found Mahony to be utterly unbelievable."

Standing against the law, in other words, comes easily to Mahony — not because he grasps a higher law, but because his self-indulgent liberalism is essentially lawless. His left-wing clericalism means that he can ignore justly enacted positive laws with the same casualness with which he ignores inconvenient parts of canon law.

I had to laugh when I heard last week that he in effect called on Los Angeles Catholics to "fast" and "pray" that amnesty be extended to illegal immigrants. This is a cardinal who normally considers such practices ultramontane burdens — a cardinal who waives Holy Days of Obligation when they fall too close to Sunday, because he doesn't want the faithful to suffer the agony of going to church twice within three days. Yet to advance his chic liberalism he will harness the power of old-time piety and invoke weighty Catholic language he usually dismisses as too sectarian. The Church, he proudly harrumphs against a phantom threat, "is not in a position of negotiating the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy" — a phrase I've never heard him utter before.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/neumayr200604120719.asp

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