He figured it out; why can't Mexico?

Victor Davis Hanson succinctly points out what we've been hammering on around here for quite some time - that America's illegal immigration problem, at least the portion of it comprised of Mexican citizens arriving and staying here in violation of the law, is driven mostly by the overwhelming incompetence, endemic corruption and official discrimination against these hard-working and generally decent peasants in their country of origin:

"Something is going very wrong in Mexico to prompt more than half a million of its citizens to cross the border illegally each year. Impoverished Mexican nationals variously cite poor economic conditions back home, government corruption, a lack of social services, and racism. In other words, it is not just the desirability of America but also the perceived undesirability of Mexico that explains one of largest mass exoduses in modern history.

But why, then, would Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whose country's conditions are forcing out its own citizens, criticize the United States, which is receiving so many of them? And why, for that matter, would many of those illegal immigrants identify, if only symbolically, with the country that made them leave, whether by waving its flag or criticizing the attitudes of the Americans who took them in?

And how does Mexico treat the hundreds of thousands of aliens who seek to illegally cross its own southern border with Central America each year? Does Mexico believe in sovereign borders to its south but not to its north?"

Mexico needs to clam up and work on its own serious societal issues for awhile before its putative "leaders" dare to again point fingers at the U.S. for simply wishing to control our own borders.