Sonora, Mexico governor demands we drop some of our laws, pass others (care to guess?)

An article in the Arizona Republic is mostly about Gov. Guillermo Padrés Elías, governor of the state of Sonora, Mexico, and his contention that would-be tourists need not fear rumors of violence in Sonora.

Media coverage has sensationalized the drug violence that has gripped parts of Mexico, new Sonora Gov. Guillermo Padrés Elías said Monday as he pledged that his state remains safe to tourists.

Sonora is home to Puerto Peñasco, commonly known as Rocky Point. Tourism at the popular, beachside resort town has slipped as many Arizonans have stayed away amid accounts of warring drug cartels south of the border. Cartel-related violence resulted in more than 6,000 deaths in Mexico last year alone, according to the Arizona Attorney General's Office.

But Padres said the bulk of the violence has occurred elsewhere in Mexico, and called Sonora his country's safest border state.

"We have a lot safer state than a lot of the cities here in the United States," Padres insisted during a meeting with The Arizona Republic. "Nobody that visits us is in harm's way."

Fair enough--I haven't done any research on that topic, and am not in a position to refute those assertions. Since I'm not planning any trips to the area anytime soon, I'm willing to, in theory at least, take his word for it.

It's later in the article that I run into some problems with his positions.

Thorny issues remain, however. Padrés suggested that some immigration-related laws passed in Arizona "are hard for my people." When pressed, he pointed to the state's 2007 employer-sanctions law, which allows law enforcement to target employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants.

"That hit a lot of people," said Padrés, who served as a lawmaker at both a state and federal level in Mexico prior to becoming governor. "I'm not going to be in agreement with bills that are going to hurt the people that are living here (in Arizona) from Mexico."

In other words, he is unhappy that U.S. businesses that illegally, knowingly facilitate the violation of our national borders can be punished by our government for doing so. As for whether he is "in agreement" with such laws, or not--I'm having some trouble coming up anything that concerns me less than that.

And now for new laws he thinks we should pass--I don't think anyone is going to be surprised.

Padrés and Brewer also appear to be at odds regarding the supply of assault weapons in the United States, some of which have found their way into the fight between drug cartels and the Mexican government. U.S. officials say roughly 90 percent of the guns traced in Mexico originated in the U.S, but the figure is widely disputed because most guns confiscated in Mexico cannot be traced.

"We don't make them," Padrés said. "We don't have them. It's weapons that are coming from the United States."

"Coming from the United States," eh? Well, that's debatable (and a debate we'd win). More importantly, wherever the guns are coming from, legal "assault weapons" aren't causing carnage in the U.S., so if they're being used to do so in Mexico, that's not because of their availability here.

Arizona's Governor Brewer, by the way, sounds like quite an improvement over her predecessor, Janet Napolitano (now Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security).

But in May, Brewer told attendees at a National Rifle Association conference in Phoenix that she opposed additional federal regulations on the sale of guns, including the return of a U.S. ban on semiautomatic, military-style rifles. That ban, which expired in 2004,has been advocated by Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

"New gun laws are not the answer to increasing gun violence in Mexico," Brewer told NRA members this spring. "The answer is to secure the border and leave the freedoms of the United States citizen alone. Don't mess with the Second Amendment."

That's not the first time I've made that observation about Governor Brewer, as compared to Napolitano.