Senate Democrats gave Felipe Calderon a standing ovation as he criticized the Arizona enforcement law, and asked Congress to reinstate the ban on so-called assault weapons.

On the issue of Arizona, no one asked Calderon how illegal aliens along Mexico’s southern border are treated.

From an article in USA Today, Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras said, “There (in the United States), they’ll deport you. In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first.”

“The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else’s,” said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.

…In 2008, Mexico softened the punishment for illegal immigrants, from a maximum 10 years in prison to a maximum fine of $461. Most detainees are taken to detention centers and put on buses for home.

…To discourage migrants from speaking out about abuse, Mexican authorities often tell detainees they will have to stay longer in detention centers if they file a complaint, Vertíz said.

As to the issue of guns, it is completely false to claim most ‘assault’ weapons coming into Mexico are from the U.S. Aside from the misleading euphemism of ‘assault’ (a fictitious category of firearms concocted by liberal Democrats - as though you cannot assault someone with anything), the majority of firearms confiscated by the Mexican government are from other countries. The oft-repeated lie (including from Obama) of 90 to 100 percent of guns coming from America is probably closer to 17 percent. The gun control advocates’ number represents only those that are returned to the U.S. for tracing, not the actual number confiscated in Mexico.

According to a statement from the National Shooting Sports Foundation:

Some 29,000 firearms were recovered in Mexico in 2008, of which approximately 5,000 were traced to U.S. sources. That means more than 80 percent of the firearms recovered in Mexico were not traced to the United States. Furthermore, according to the ATF, those firearms traced were originally sold at retail not recently, but on average 14 years earlier. This is completely inconsistent with any notion that a flood of newly purchased firearms are being illegally smuggled over the border into Mexico. And let’s not forget, no retail firearms sale can be made in the U.S. until after a criminal background check on the purchaser has been completed.

In recent years as many as 150,000 Mexican soldiers, 17,000 last year alone, defected to go work for the drug cartels — bringing their American-made service-issued firearms with them. It has also been well documented that the drug cartels are illegally smuggling fully automatic firearms, grenades and other weapons into Mexico from South and Central America. Such items are not being purchased at retail firearms stores in the United States.

Robbing Americans of a constitutionally protected right to ostensibly aid a foreign government is ludicrous. Regardless of the actual number of firearms recovered, it’s not a gun issue, but a border issue. Secure the border and you won’t have to worry about illegal guns, drugs, or people crossing.

The fact so many of our politicians would give the Mexican president a standing ovation speaks volumes of their allegiance, and it’s not with the American people or Constitution.