In Rob Sanchez’s post about the Youtube debate, not only did the Democrats want universal health care, they wanted it extended to illegal aliens. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson seemed to think that uninsured illegals were “Americans.”

VDARE.com: Blog Articles » Youtube Debate Ignores Immigration
COOPER: Would your plan, Governor Richardson, cover undocumented workers?

RICHARDSON: Yes, it would. It should cover everybody. (APPLAUSE) In this country, no matter who you are, whether you’re a ditch- digger, you’re a teacher, you’re a CEO, you’re a waiter, you’re a maid, every American deserves the right to the best possible quality health care.

It seems no one noticed that the question was about, not “every American” but about all the illegal aliens. The point about aliens is that they aren’t American–except in the sense that many of them are from somewhere in what might someday be a North American Union.

Well, all I can say is that we night people would be a lot more cheerful and well-rested if society would stop waking us up with early afternoon phone calls.

Here’s the Reuter’s article.

Maybe it was just a burst of gaffes as defined by Michael Kinsley– moments when a politician accidentally tells the truth. Or maybe it was tactical chicanery. (See below.)

But it makes for interesting reading: Washington Times reporters (and formidable immigration specialists — see here and here) Stephen Dinan and Jerry Seper, along with some Times colleagues, recently interviewed Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S., and distilled the result into a punchy article, Mexican envoy hits own policies (July 20, 2007).

VDARE’s Allan Wall has contributed a few blog entries about Sarukhan (examples here and here) that give little encouragement for any hopes that the new ambassador will be different from the sorry run of meddlesome Mexican “diplomats” who have been in our faces over the last couple of decades. (See Heather MacDonald’s classic “Mexico’s Undiplomatic Diplomats,” City Journal, Autumn 2005. Sample sentence: “Diplomacy may be the art of lying for one’s country, but Mexican diplomacy requires taking that art to virtuosic heights.”)

However, in this outing, at least, Ambassador Sarukhan lays off the blarney. Here’s the article’s opener:

“Mexico’s ambassador to the United States yesterday said previous Mexican officials made a ‘dumb mistake’ by issuing comic books to aid illegal aliens crossing the border, and said his government cannot criticize U.S. treatment of illegal aliens as long as Mexico has harsh laws on its books.

“‘It’s very hard for Mexico to preach to the north what it does not do to the south,’ Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said in a meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Times, referring to Mexico’s felony penalties for, and sometimes cruel treatment of, those caught crossing its southern border.

“‘Unless we correct the fundamental challenge of the violation of human rights of Latin American or Central American migrants crossing the border into Mexico, it’s very hard for me to come up and wag a finger and say you guys should protect the rights of my citizens in this country,’ he said, adding that changes to the Mexican law are now pending.”

That’s quite refreshing, since one could reasonably conclude that “Do as I say, not as I do” is the sole content of Mexican foreign policy, at least with respect to the United States.

A bit further along in the Dinan/Seper article, we read:

“But Mr. Sarukhan said Mexican officials understand Americans’ trepidation and desire for a secure border, and he said they are well aware of the consequences if a breach of the U.S.-Mexican border were to be involved in a future attack on U.S. security.

“‘The day that happens, this relationship as we have known it, is over,’ he said. ‘I would say Mexico and the United States are working extremely well in trying to ensure that border is not used to underpin or challenge the national security of the United States.’”

The explosion of introspective frankness continues to the article’s conclusion:

“[Sarukhan] said remittances are not the long-term solution for sustained growth in Mexico, particularly because it’s an indicator that many of Mexico’s best workers have fled the country to find jobs.

“‘No country can grow if it is not able to hold onto its women and men. Some of them, I don’t know if they’re talented or not, but they’re certainly bold,’ he said.”

So is an era of Mexican glasnost upon us? Let’s hope Allan Wall will weigh in on the question.

In the meantime, we would do well to be skeptical. As the same WashTimes article reminds us, after the thumping the amnesty-and-comprehensive-capitulation-to-Mexico bill took in the U.S. Senate late last month, “[Mexican President] Calderon called the bill’s failure a ‘grave mistake.’” Thus Sarukhan’s recent burst of adult behavior might simply be the rarefied diplomatic equivalent of suppressing Mexican-flag waving at those in-your-face mass rallies of those in-the-shadows illegal aliens: No change of heart, just a tactical adjustment to snooker the gringos.

But it would be nice if Sarukhan’s surge of public maturity doesn’t subside and, instead, spreads. Then the southern California friend who, a few years ago, announced “I didn’t hate Mexicans until they organized to take over my homeland” would have reason for some rethinking, as would many of us.

Another case of “Immigrant Mass Murder Syndrome” thwarted? His citizenship is unclear at the moment because he had two passports, but Olutosin Oduwole is a Nigerian name. The only places you find people named Olutosin Oduwole are (a) Nigeria, and (b) countries that allow immigration from Nigeria. In any case, there’s not only the death threats, there’s the demand for money, which sounds like the kind of thing I get in email all the time from Nigeria: “An undelivered note found in Oduwole’s abandoned car threatened “a murderous rampage similar to the VT shooting … THIS IS NOT A JOKE” unless he received $50,000 within seven days.”

At the moment, the word “Nigerian” is used in some stories to describe his passport, not him. The words African
and Immigrant are not used at all.

Illinois student charged with threatening rampage | U.S. | Reuters
llinois student charged with threatening rampage
Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:31PM EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A 22-year-old college student was held on Wednesday on charges that he threatened to shoot other students in a “murderous rampage” like the April massacre at Virginia Tech University, school officials said.

A loaded handgun was found last week in the campus apartment of Olutosin Oduwole, a student at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and he was arrested.

Oduwole was charged with making a terrorist threat and gun possession. He was being held on $1 million bail.

An undelivered note found in Oduwole’s abandoned car threatened “a murderous rampage similar to the VT shooting … THIS IS NOT A JOKE” unless he received $50,000 within seven days.

On April 16, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and injured 25 others before killing himself.

Oduwole had purchased four more guns on the Internet but had not yet received them, school officials said.

A gun dealer alerted federal agents because Oduwole appeared impatient to get the weapons, according to a police affidavit.

Authorities found both a U.S. and a Nigerian passport in Oduwole’s apartment but school records listed his home address as in Maplewood, New Jersey. He was taking summer classes, and had been placed on academic probation a year earlier.

The lovable SPLC has an email list called “Immigration Watch” and I’m signed up to get their emails. (You can sign up by emailing them.) I got good post off that list here.

Anyhow, this what I got in email:

Note to readers: Please note that from this week forward, the name of this weekly newsletter will be “Nativist Watch” in order to better reflect its focus on nativist extremist activists and organizations rather than general matters of immigration policy.

NATIVIST WATCH
—————————————————-
An e-newsletter monitoring extremism and the anti-immigration movement

Obviously, it’s not us who are the extremists, it’s the SPLC. We believe what most Americans believe, that immigration is out of hand, and it’s a problem. They think that a few American activists, and the Minutemen who volunteer to do the job that that Border Patrol isn’t doing, are a bigger problem than 20 million illegals and the Mexican Mafia.