Mexican Citizens May Gain Right to Dual Nationality

The Congress here is drafting a constitutional amendment that would allow Mexicans for the first time to hold dual nationality--a measure that could encourage millions of Mexicans now living in the United States to seek American citizenship.

The amendment would let Mexican immigrants in the United States and other countries adopt citizenship abroad, while keeping their Mexican passports and enjoying other rights of Mexican citizens--most likely with the exception of the right to vote in Mexico.

Proponents of the measure, supported by all three major Mexican political parties and likely to become law later this year, say it is an attempt to modernize Mexico’s archaic, chauvinistic nationality laws to catch up with some First World countries that already permit dual citizenship.

“It is a question of equality in the international environment,” said ruling party legislator Natividad Gonzalez, a member of the committee drafting the measure in the Chamber of Deputies.

But the amendment has sweeping implications--demographic and political--for the United States.

Some analysts say the new measure could create a powerful, new pro-Mexico lobby group in the United States. It could also significantly increase the workload for U.S. immigration authorities, with an expected surge of applications for both citizenship and U.S. residency.

Gonzalez’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, estimates that the amendment would affect more than 5 million Mexicans permanently residing in the United States. They qualify for U.S. citizenship but have not sought it.

Out of national pride, cultural identity or business concerns, they wanted to remain Mexican. The proposed amendment would essentially redefine what it means to be a Mexican and would create a category of dual nationals who would be exempt from restrictions on business activity and property ownership that are applied to foreigners.

Lawmakers are still hammering out the amendment’s fine points and have yet to determine specifically who would qualify for dual nationality.

Jorge Bustamante, whose Research Institute of the Northern Frontier in Tijuana has been studying the measure for weeks, insisted that the PRI estimate of 5 million is grossly inflated.

Based on U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service data gathered by his researchers, he estimates that between 1.5 million and 2 million Mexicans in the United States would qualify.

In 1993, according to INS figures, 23,630 Mexicans became U.S. citizens. Over the previous decade, 203,000 had done so.

Bustamante said the law’s greatest impact would be in California.

“More than half of [those who could be affected] live in California,” he said. “And 70% of [those] live in Los Angeles. Another quarter live in Texas, 8% in the Chicago area and most of the rest in New Mexico and Colorado.”

Privately, U.S. officials dispute Bustamante’s estimates. They say the number of Mexican U.S. residents affected by the proposed law could exceed even the PRI estimate of 5 million. They also say the measure could have serious implications for the workload of immigration authorities here and in the United States.

If the amendment passes, they said, the INS is likely to be swamped, first with citizenship applications from Mexicans permanently residing in the United States, then with immigration applications from their family members in Mexico. As relatives of U.S. citizens, those individuals would no longer be subject to quotas and would circumvent a waiting list that now takes 15 to 18 years.

The dual nationality initiative could also have a profound impact on U.S. politics.

Several American analysts said they see a hidden agenda behind Mexico’s multi-party support for the amendment. Several said they suspect that it is related to California’s Proposition 187, which bars illegal immigrants from using most state services and programs, and what they called “Mexico-bashing” by conservatives in the U.S. Congress.

“After Prop. 187 passed, the Mexican government has been looking for ways to create a more effective lobby group in the U.S.,” said one analyst who asked not to be identified. “By encouraging qualified Mexicans resident in America to apply for U.S. citizenship, which will give them the right to vote in U.S. elections, Mexico stands to gain millions of new votes that could influence policy in Washington and states like California.”

Specifically, such a voting bloc could influence anti-immigrant state initiatives such as Prop. 187; congressional debate on such critical issues as President Clinton’s $20-billion rescue package for Mexico’s economy, and any other state or federal legislation that affects migrants in the United States.

Bustamante agreed that the measure would send “a strong signal to the Mexico-bashers in the United States,” although he said he doubts that is among the legislative motives in Mexico.

“This will not ensure that everybody will apply for citizenship, that they will vote, that they will vote along the lines of what we in Mexico would prefer, let alone what the government would prefer,” he said, adding that he proposed the idea of dual nationality eight years ago. “Yet I think it’s a good idea, because the politicians in the U.S. will have to take into account a new political cost of Mexico-bashing.”

The measure’s authors deny that their motives are political. They note that, under the proposed law, the most profound change for Mexicans who choose U.S. citizenship would be their ability to vote in U.S. elections.

“We feel that those Mexicans who are living abroad, who regularize their situation and who exercise their civil and political rights, well, it’s normal that they do so because they have been living in that foreign country for many years,” Gonzalez said.

The initiative, he said, is “an important change, grounded in the new times the world is living in,” he said. “And it could mean a more modern concept of Mexico without chauvinistic fears, in which we know that nationality is in the heart and the culture and not necessarily in the sole of one’s shoes.”

A vivid evocation of the cultural pride the amendment seeks to address--pride that analysts believe has kept many Mexicans who went abroad out of economic necessity from renouncing their nationality--is in one of Mexico’s most famous mariachi songs, “Mexico Lindo y Querido.”

“If I die away from you,” the song says of Mexico, “tell them that I’m sleeping. And have them bring me back so I can be buried there.”

Bustamante is among those who believe that national pride--combined with a deep prejudice here against those who abandon Mexico--is the strongest factor keeping Mexicans who qualify for U.S. citizenship from seeking it. With the dual nationality initiative, lawmakers hope to eliminate that prejudice.

Bustamante and others see another powerful force at work. The initiative comes against the backdrop of new fears among Mexicans in the United States that the conservative U.S. Congress will curb their rights unless they elevate their status from U.S. residents to U.S. citizens, he said.

The INS “already reports a dramatic increase in applications for citizenship even without dual nationality,” Bustamante said. “If you add to that this initiative, which leaves them with nothing to lose in Mexico and everything to gain in the U.S., it could certainly happen that the majority will make the change.”