Diplomacy: President Felipe Calderon, on his first state visit Wednesday, diverted talk from Mexico's narco war to worries about Arizona's immigration law. Time for a reality check: Illegal migration stokes Mexico's war.

Mexico's president, an otherwise admirable leader, has a real blind spot about the role illegal immigration plays in the awful war his country is now fighting on drug cartels.

Speaking at a White House garden press conference with President Obama, Calderon made fine pledges of cooperation with the U.S. to fight illicit trafficking: "We agreed upon the urgency to reinforce the actions to stop the flow of drugs, weapons and cash."

But placed with his other statements criticizing Arizona's immigration law, he left the matter of halting illegal immigration from his country completely out of the picture. That might be good politics in Mexico, but it's an awful strategy, given that illegal immigration is a major part of drug cartel operations today.

Up until the mid-1990s, people-smuggling by "coyotes" was a small operation run by freelancers who came and went.

That changed in the past decade with increased U.S. border control measures, which put them out of business.

U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Special Agent Joe Romero told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that the drug traffickers and people smugglers have now completely merged.

"The drug cartels have determined this is big business," he said from El Paso. Drug cartels "control these corridors. ... It used to be, 'Get across the fence and run.' Now it's a lot more organized."

The cartels — which had vast networks of smugglers, document forgers, safe house operators, drivers, and officials on the take — had resources to evade border checks and to rake in money.

Texas' border crackdown in recent years sealed a key entry point, so Arizona has become the new gateway.

Mexico has now shipped between 6 million and 12 million illegal immigrants to the U.S., with most paying the cartels to enter.

So every illegal immigrant, so romanticized by political leaders, is also someone who's paid $2,500 or so to cartels.

With millions making it to the U.S., it amounts to $6 billion in earnings for the smugglers — compared with Mexico's drug trade, which brings in $10 billion to $20 billion a year.

So it's not just Hollywood cocaine snorters who are fueling these cartels. It's also cash from Mexican illegals, who are often forced to double as drug smugglers or work in slave conditions for the cartels to pay off their debts.

Lawmen say that the cartel takeover of human smuggling operations also is responsible for the incredible violence and ruthless abandonment of immigrants in the desert, which thus far has been blamed on the U.S.

The reality is, it's human smugglers — the same people who shoot up Mexican restaurants, kill U.S. consular employees, attack Mexican military bases, kidnap, massacre schoolchildren and "disappear" political leaders, as happened to a prominent member of Calderon's own political party in just the past week.

Fact is, drug cartels are financed by cash, and much of that cash is coming from a nonstop stream of illegal immigrants — who, incredibly enough, are being encouraged to immigrate to the U.S. by the Mexican government itself as a convenient means of relieving themselves of the pressure of creating jobs and investing in education.

Unfortunately, this is now being ignored in the wartime strategy to defeat Mexico's violent cartels.

It makes zero sense. Until cartels start losing the billions in cash flow they get from illegal immigrant smuggling operations, it won't matter how many drug operations are won.

The Obama administration talks a good game about a comprehensive immigration strategy but what he and his Mexican counterpart must really talk about is a comprehensive victory strategy.

Ending illegal immigration is as much a part of it as beating the cartels. In fact, the immigration issue isn't separate from the Mexican war. It's the same war.