Mexican President Felipe Calderon hasn't shied away from telling President Obama what he thinks -- and now a joint session of Congress will get an earful on May 19. NationalJournal.com consulted experts and officials from both governments on what to expect from Calderon's first Washington visit with Obama and his first address to Congress.

A senior Mexican official said Calderon's speech was still being written, but he speculated that international cooperation to combat Mexico's cartels would be a major purpose of the visit.

As regards the other elephant in the room, the official said the speech "was originally not supposed to mention immigration, but because of what has happened with the Arizona law, because of domestic pressures, he might be inclined to do so."

Planning for the visit began back in March, before the passage of Arizona's law allowing police to detain people of suspect immigration status. Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, said the current spotlight on immigration will "make it difficult for Calderon not to address it."

"I would suspect the president would present a united front with Calderon since they have both come out against the Arizona law, but it's delicate," Farnsworth said. "When you get any foreign leader coming to the United States to talk about American immigration policy, that's delicate."

Calderon has not only spoken out against the law but issued a travel advisory to Mexican citizens who might visit Arizona.

While immigration reform is moving to the top of the national dialogue, counternarcotics is the issue Calderon "has staked his presidency on," according to Geoff Thale, program director for the Washington Office on Latin America.

Since his election in 2006, Calderon has taken an aggressive stance against drug cartels, increasing military involvement in counternarcotics operations and in the process sparking a low-level war against government officials. This will definitely be a subject where Calderon can be expected to "stress shared responsibility," said Eric Olson, an adviser to the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute.

Calderon has pressured Obama to tighten access to guns and decriminalize drug use in small quantities to counter the cartels' business plans, as Mexico has done. In Obama's April 2009 visit to Mexico he acknowledged the need to stem the cartels' gun-running from the U.S. And last year, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton observed that the "insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," stressing the need for "co-responsibility" against cartel violence.

But while the general theme of co-responsibility will probably come through in Calderon's speech to Congress, Farnsworth said it is very unlikely the controversial subjects of decriminalization or gun control will be mentioned before both houses of lawmakers.

The Mexican leader is expected to make a "front-and-center priority" of cross-border trucking under the North American Free Trade Agreement, according to Patrick Kilbride, director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Illegal immigration and drug violence concerns don't really provide the whole picture of our relationship with Mexico," Kilbride said. Union opposition to NAFTA plans for Mexican trucking on U.S. highways led Mexico to retaliate with tariffs against American products in March 2009.

Every state visit needs a bright spot, and Calderon could also give Congress detail about the two countries' cooperation on the environment. Mexico will host December's U.N. conference on climate change in Cancun, and collaboration on green initiatives is "something both sides will want to trumpet," said Jeremy Martin, director of the Institute of the Americas' energy program.

"Part of is because they're running out of oil, but I think there's a real environmental initiative going on with the Mexicans and cross-border renewable energy collaboration like wind farming," Martin said. "The drug war topic or the controversial stuff going on in Arizona is what grabs headlines, but I think there's a lot of upside and opportunity for green energy development."