Arizona Law Causes Split for Border Governors

Arizona Law Causes Split for Border Governors
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: July 6, 2010

  
PHOENIX — For nearly 30 years, the governors of the states that line both sides of the United States-Mexico border have gathered to celebrate border bonhomie. They issue proclamations and pledges to work together, air grievances and concerns behind closed doors and pose for the cameras in symbolic showings of cooperation.

But this year the 28th annual conference has collided headlong with Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigration, inspiring bitter recriminations among Mexican governors and rancor among some American ones.

Ms. Brewer happens by rotation to be the chairwoman and host of this year’s conference, scheduled for September at a resort in Phoenix. But after all six Mexican border governors wrote to her to say they intended to boycott the gathering to protest the new law, Ms. Brewer sent a letter of her own last week to the governors on both sides of the border saying she was canceling the whole conference.

The Mexican governors had written that they would not step foot in Arizona because they considered the law, which Ms. Brewer signed in April and continues to promote, to be “based on ethnic and cultural prejudice contrary to fundamental rights.”

Now, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has stepped into the fray, pledging to salvage the conference by finding a site in another state.

“Governor Brewer doesn’t have the authority to cancel the Border Governors Conference,” Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for Mr. Richardson said. “She may not want to host it for political reasons, but that’s not a reason to sidestep the tough issues that border governors must address, including migration and border violence. Governor Richardson will look for alternative sites to host the conference, with or without Arizona’s participation.”

So the Mexican governors have written that they would not step foot in Arizona, well that's a start.
Now if we can just get the other 20 million illegals to boycott the rest of the country.