Mexico Poised to OK Dual Nationality Law

Lawmakers in Mexico City are poised to enact constitutional revisions that would allow millions of naturalized U.S. citizens to retain their rights as Mexican nationals, a historic gesture toward Mexico’s emigrant masses that is reverberating in Southern California.

The Mexican Senate unanimously approved the changes Thursday, and the lower House of Deputies is expected to take up the matter today. With support across the political spectrum, experts predict that the long-debated policy shift will receive final congressional approval and be ratified by the required two-thirds of the 31 state legislatures. The revisions could go into effect sometime next year.

“This is a fundamental and historic step,” said Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, Mexico’s consul general in Los Angeles, center of the largest concentration of people of Mexican ancestry outside of Mexico City. “It is a recognition by the Mexican government of the historical debt owed to Mexicans residing in the United States.”

The legislation could benefit up to 5.5 million Mexican natives residing legally in the United States, according to Mexican government estimates, an immigrant population that is concentrated in California and the Southwest but now is spread out nationwide, from New York to Florida to Seattle and Hawaii. Mexico is by far the largest source of emigrants to the United States.

About 2 million Mexico-born U.S. citizens could recover their Mexican nationality. The other 3.5 million would be free to apply for U.S. citizenship, assuming they are otherwise eligible, with confidence that they would not lose most rights under Mexican law, officials said.

Once congress approves the constitutional amendments, lawmakers in coming months are to tackle several tricky questions, such as payment of Mexican taxes, military service and the right of dual nationals to vote in Mexican elections. Reform proposals that would allow absentee balloting abroad in the presidential contest in the year 2000 are pending, but the idea has stalled amid strong political and logistic barriers.

The Senate bill did not address the contentious voting issue--long a key demand of leftist opposition parties, which predict that most Mexicans residing outside the country would cast ballots against the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Ruling party legislators who helped draft the Senate measure billed it as an effort to modernize Mexico’s archaic nationality laws--matching those of dozens of other nations that permit dual nationality, including Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The Senate-passed version would permit dual nationals to own property and businesses in Mexico, keep Mexican passports and enjoy most other rights of Mexican citizens.

The fear of losing property rights has helped discourage generations of Mexican immigrants from applying for U.S. citizenship. Mexican law limits property ownership by foreigners, including an outright ban on foreign ownership within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of borders and 50 kilometers of the coasts.

Strong emotional and cultural attachments and the heartfelt desire of many to return to their nearby homeland has also contributed to the fact that Mexicans have long been among the least likely eligible immigrants to take the oath as naturalized U.S. citizens.

That has been changing in recent years, however, as what many Latinos perceive as an anti-immigrant agenda in the United States has prodded record numbers of Mexicans to sign up for U.S. citizenship. Experts say the changes in Mexican law may well accelerate that trend, encouraging others to follow.

The proposed law is widely viewed in both nations as a response to U.S. measures targeting immigrants. Becoming a citizen, many immigrants say, is the best way to maximize protections, while making it easier for people to petition for loved ones still residing abroad.

“It’s a case of protecting Mexican nationals’ civil rights in the United States,” said Jeffrey Weldon, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

But, more broadly, the move underscores the growing economic importance of a huge expatriate population that was long ignored and even disparaged in Mexico City’s strongly nationalist policy circles. The changes amount to an official recognition that Mexico is a source of immigrants and that Mexicanidad--the essence of Mexican nationality--transcends place of residence.

Today, Mexican immigrants annually send about $4 billion to their relatives back home--Mexico’s third-largest source of foreign exchange, after exports of petroleum and manufactured goods, according to government figures.

“It’s more important than ever for the Mexican economy that Mexican immigrants already settled in the United States maintain their economic ties with Mexico,” said Wayne Cornelius, research director at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego. “I think whatever nationalistic reservations about dual nationality that once existed have been swept away--by the successive economic crises of the 1980s and 1990s, by the reality of NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], and by the overall process of economic integration between the two countries.”

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The dual-nationality move is widely supported among Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles. People interviewed outside the Mexican consulate, near MacArthur Park, uniformly praised the change.

“This allows me to become a citizen here without feeling I’m abandoning Mexico,” said Pedro Arias, 70, a retired welder and father of five who applied for U.S. citizenship only this year--40 years after he arrived from Jalisco state.

Added Maria Carresosa, a mother of five from the state of Durango: “It’s important that we keep our rights as Mexicans. We can’t change what we are, even if we do become citizens here.”

From a different perspective, many activists organized against illegal immigration look warily on the prospect of millions of people from Mexico attaining dual citizenship. Ron Prince, a key architect of Proposition 187, unsuccessfully attempted to place a measure on the California ballot this year condemning the dual-nationality process.

“I don’t know how anybody can be expected to maintain true faith and allegiance to the United States if they are still considered nationals of another country,” said Bill King, a former U.S. Border Patrol chief who helped craft Proposition 187 and now heads an Orange County-based group called Americans for Responsible Immigration.

Longtime residents from Mexico say they are as loyal as anyone else to the United States, but want to keep ties to their homeland, for both practical and emotional reasons. “This country has treated me well, and I love it, but I am still Mexican,” said Arias.

McDonnell reported from Los Angeles and Fineman from Mexico City.