It appears that the circus surrounding the Arizona immigration law has just taken a turn for the crazy: BBC World News reported yesterday that the government of Mexico filed an amicus curiae (“a friend of the court”) brief in US federal court, saying that “the law is unconstitutional and would damage bilateral relations.”
The Mexican government’s brief added that the law could lead to “unlawful discrimination against Mexican citizens”. Have they read the law? Have they analyzed case law? Do they know anything about the Constitution, or how the Constitution is interpreted? The bigger question, at least in my mind, is why Mexico feels that it has any business at all interpreting American law in the first place.
This wouldn’t be the first time the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderón has insulted the US and its sovereignty; while addressing a joint session of Congress, the Mexican president openly criticized the law, declaring that it “introduces a terrible idea that uses racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.”
This article appears in Jun 17-23, 2010.