Speaking of Xenophobic...

UNBELIEVABLE.

Try and reconcile the policies of Mexico with the demands that Vicente Fox and company, some American citizens, and some American elected officials (mostly Democrats), are making on the United States.

You can't.

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.

In the United States, only two posts _ the presidency and vice presidency _ are reserved for the native born.

In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.

Foreign-born Mexicans can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico's Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for "native-born Mexicans."

Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from such local jobs as firefighters, police and judges.

Juxtapose these tight restrictions with the measures passed by the U.S. Senate last Thursday.

Some questions for U.S. senators:

John McCain, care to explain how you could vote to allow criminals, identity thieves, to receive Social Security benefits as a reward for their crimes?

And Harry Reid, making charges that codifying English to be the official language of the U.S. is racist, what do you think of Mexico's policies?

...The foreign-born make up just 0.5 percent of Mexico's 105 million people, compared with about 13 percent in the United States, which has a total population of 299 million. Mexico grants citizenship to about 3,000 people a year, compared to the U.S. average of almost a half million.

Look at these figures!

How can Mexico threaten the U.S. with lawsuits for protecting our southern border while it is strengthening its own immigration policies to be more restrictive and hostile to immigrants?

It's absolutely absurd!

...[J. Michael Waller, of the Center for Security Policy in Washington said,] "If American policy-makers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican constitution," he said in a recent article on immigration.

EXACTLY!

Some Mexicans agree their country needs to change.

"This country needs to be more open," said Francisco Hidalgo, a 50- year-old video producer. "In part to modernize itself, and in part because of the contribution these (foreign-born) people could make."

This is a minority opinion, but the Associated Press, ever fair and balanced, tosses it in. It must have taken a lot of work to get a quote expressing such an unusual sentiment.

Others express a more common view, a distrust of foreigners that academics say is rooted in Mexico's history of foreign invasions and the loss of territory in the 1847-48 Mexican-American War.

Speaking of the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who enter Mexico each year, chauffeur Arnulfo Hernandez, 57, said: "The ones who want to reach the United States, we should send them up there. But the ones who want to stay here, it's usually for bad reasons, because they want to steal or do drugs."

Some say progress is being made. Mexico's president no longer is required to be at least a second-generation native-born. That law was changed in 1999 to clear the way for candidates who have one foreign- born parent, like President Vicente Fox, whose mother is from Spain.

But the pace of change is slow. The state of Baja California still requires candidates for the state legislature to prove both their parents were native born.

The double standard is so blatant that it's a joke.

Mexico is insisting that we should grant the full rights of citizenship to millions of illegals in our country while at the same time Mexico toughens its immigration laws.

AT THE VERY SAME TIME!

The fact that U.S. lawmakers kowtow to Mexico is sickening.

Does my position reveal that I'm racist?

No. It reveals that I'm rational, unlike some members of the U.S. Senate.