John McCain, Other GOP Senators Slam Calderon Immigration Remarks

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and several other Republican senators Thursday criticized remarks by Mexican President Filipe Calderon, who told a joint session of Congress that the recently passed Arizona immigration law amounts to racial profiling and called on lawmakers to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

McCain, who led the doomed immigration reform effort in 2006 but is now calling for National Guard troops to help police the U.S. Mexico border, called Calderon's comments on his state's immigration law "unfortunate and disappointing."

The law makes it a crime in Arizona to be without documentation of immigration status and it gives police the power to question anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally

McCain told reporters that he wants Calderon to work with the American government to secure the U.S.- Mexico border, which he said is badly broken. "1.3 million pounds of marijuana were intercepted in the Tuscon sector, 241,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended in the Tuscan sector," McCain said. "My state is being invaded and the people who live there do not have security."

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said that Calderon's statements about American laws were out of bounds. "I don't think we should have some foreign leader come in here and criticize the statute of a state, where they are implementing a federal law on a state basis," Hatch said of the Arizona immigration law.

He also chafed at Calderon's call on the U.S. to revisit the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. "We don't need someone coming in here and telling us how to handle an explicit clause of the Constitution," Hatch said. "I like President Calderon. I know him, I like him, he has a very difficult job. But it was inappropriate to say what he said."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), whose state shares a border with Mexico, rejected Calderon's assertion that the Arizona law allows racial profiling. "It was inappropriate for President Calderon to lecture Americans on our own state and federal laws," Cornyn said.