Lawmakers in Mexico Approve Dual Nationality

Mexico’s Congress on Tuesday approved constitutional changes that would permit dual nationality for millions of Mexicans living abroad--including, according to some estimates, at least 2 million permanent residents in Southern California.

The amendments, which passed the lower Chamber of Deputies by a 405-1 vote, for the first time would allow an estimated 5 million or more Mexicans who have adopted or qualify for U.S. citizenship to retain their Mexican nationality, their Mexican passports and their right to own property and businesses in Mexico--even after becoming U.S. citizens.

The legislation, approved by Mexico’s Senate last week, is expected to be ratified by Mexico’s 31 state legislatures and signed into law by President Ernesto Zedillo sometime early next year.

Although the amendments do not address such key issues as the right of dual nationals to vote in major 1997 local, state and federal elections in Mexico, the legislation’s proponents said the right to dual nationality will remove a major cultural and legal hurdle for millions of Mexicans who have resisted U.S. citizenship even though they qualify for it.

The amendments, they say, do nothing less than redefine what it means to be Mexican, making it possible for Mexicans to retain their national identity and property rights while adopting new citizenship abroad.

“All those who have participated in this legislative process have kept in mind the millions of Mexicans who have had to leave their country for better living conditions,” said Deputy Cuauhtemoc Sandoval, whose opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party voted with the ruling party in a rare show of multi-partisan unity. “Above all, the Mexican community in the United States has lived in a real political and social apartheid. They have not been able to vote--neither there nor here. They haven’t had social rights--neither there nor here.”

Distinguishing between nationality and citizenship, Mexican officials and members of Congress said that voting rights are a question of citizenship that must be tackled in separate, election-reform legislation. The amendments approved Tuesday, they said, were limited to more basic--though partly symbolic--questions of nationalism and nationality.

For years, Mexico’s political opposition has favored voting rights for Mexican migrants, who they believe would tend to vote against Mexico’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party; most Mexicans emigrate to the United States or European countries whose democracies are more open than Mexico’s.

But the amendments have broad political and demographic implications for the United States.

The Mexican government estimates that dual nationality would affect about 5.5 million Mexicans who are permanent, legal U.S. residents. Of those, about 2 million are Mexican-born U.S. citizens who would be able to reestablish their Mexican nationality. The remaining 3.5 million are Mexican natives who qualify for U.S. citizenship but so far have opted against it because--out of cultural pride, the fear of prejudice back home or business concerns--they wish to retain Mexican nationality, which the constitution previously has forbidden.

Those who now opt for U.S. citizenship will join the growing ranks of immigrant voters who affect U.S. elections--especially in states such as California, where immigration issues are prominent.

A study last year by the Tijuana-based Northern Border Research Institute estimated that more than half of those affected by the new amendments live in Southern California, where Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, Mexico’s consul general in Los Angeles, last week called the pending amendments “historic . . . a recognition by the Mexican government [of] the historic debt owed to Mexicans residing in the United States.”

Government figures show that Mexicans abroad send about $4 billion a year to relatives back home, indicating the strength of the economic ties between Mexican families and their emigrants to the U.S.

The amendments, government officials said, are designed to reinforce cultural, social and nationalist ties as well as to further boost investment here by Mexicans permanently settled abroad.

Many Mexican analysts--among them Jorge Bustamante, who directs the Tijuana-based border research institute--have said the new amendments would eliminate one of the biggest cultural hurdles for Mexicans considering U.S. citizenship: prejudice against them back home.

“It’s a feeling that, if you change nationality, in Mexico you’re going to be labeled an anti-Mexican, and therefore you may lose whatever rights you have,” Bustamante said while the government was drafting the amendments. “This prejudice . . . and the fear of losing whatever property or ownership rights you have in Mexico will disappear with the dual nationality law.”

Luis Castro, a researcher at the institute, added Tuesday: “It’s very subjective. It’s not simply a question of economics. The cultural roots are very important for Mexicans.”

Most immigrants, he said, “work very hard toward getting the right to U.S. nationality, and that’s very important to them. But it’s also important to . . . teach your children that they have roots--and property--back in Mexico.”

Antonio Tenorio Adame, a Democratic Revolutionary Party legislator, was Tuesday’s lone dissenter in the House of Deputies. He called individuals who would qualify for dual nationality “traitors.”

In the United States, dual nationality has an ambiguous legal status, experts say. It is not encouraged, but it is permitted and is used by an undetermined number of U.S. citizens.

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Dual Nationality

The constitutional amendments passed by the Mexican Congress on Tuesday permit Mexico-born immigrants who opt for U.S. citizenship to:

* Maintain Mexican nationality

* Keep Mexican passports

* Own property or businesses in Mexico

* But the question of Mexican citizenship, especially voting rights in Mexico, has yet to be determined.

Next Step

The legislation now goes to Mexico’s 31 state legislatures for ratification, then to President Ernesto Zedillo, who can alter the amendments before signing them into law--most likely early next year.

For more information, those in Southern California who may be affected may call the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles (213) 351-6800 or the Mexican Consulate in San Diego (619) 213-8414.