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I once asked an official from a consulate office of the EU state of Britain about Turkey's possible accession into the EU as another state. He replied that it would be very disruptive—as much as if Mexico were to join the US as a state. The impact of another large state in union would be very significant, he observed. I was stunned that an official from a characteristically Euroskeptic state would make a reference that implies that the US and EU are on the same level. If his comparison is correct, then likening a Mexican state to a state in the US would evince a category mistake. That is to say, it would mean that a federal state could indeed apply to different scales of political organization, as Althusius had theorized in 1603.

Historically, Mexico was part of one colony of Spain called New Spain. For short-hand purposes, we could say that Mexico was a colony. So too was Virginia. While the latter joined a federative union with other colonies, and then sovereign (and then semi-sovereign) republics, Mexico remained as an independent state. At least by the beginning of the twenty-first century, a LAU (Latin American Union) had not formed. This does not mean, however, that Mexico is thereby a union in itself. Like many of the EU’s states, Mexico has provinces or regions, which in the American states would be intrastate regions or even counties. Some of the American states are sufficiently diverse that they would be good candidates for a federal system like that of Germany or Switzerland. Unfortunately, some of the intra-state officials in Europe and Latin America have been able to vaunt their status by calling themselves governors, as though their region were commensurate with France or Texas.

So in 2010 when all six Mexican border “governors” (six meaning that each is akin to a region say of Texas or Arizona and thus not equivalent with an American governor or a European head of state) wrote Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona to inform her that they were boycotting the 28th annual conference between “governors” of the border “states” because of Arizona’s new law to beef up enforcement of US immigration law, she could well have replied, “Well, I should really be meeting with your head of state anyway.” Just because the semi-sovereign American states do much in common through their federation does not mean that the states have somehow shrunk, such that France, a state in the EU, is now somehow equivalent to the US. That would be like saying that Virginia and the EU are equivalent. Europeans would be very offended. Yet Americans turn a blind eye to the convenient category mistakes that are made by others—and even ourselves—at our own expense.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/us/07governors.html?_r=1