Dual Nationality Will Have to Wait, Officials Say

Overwhelmed by the complexity of creating a new legal category for millions of Mexican nationals scattered across the globe, senior officials here said Wednesday that they will need at least a year before their nation can offer dual nationality, as described under constitutional changes approved by Mexico’s Congress this week.

Although President Ernesto Zedillo is expected to sign the legislation into law in early January, legal experts in the Foreign Ministry said the constitutional amendments permitting dual nationality for millions of Mexicans who adopt U.S. citizenship will not take effect until January 1998.

“We are going to need one year to establish all the procedures,” said Foreign Ministry legal advisor Miguel Angel Gonzalez Felix, adding that Mexico also needs the year to legally alter international immigration treaties to sanction the changes called for in the constitutional amendments.

Gonzalez explained that a majority of state legislatures must now approve the measures. The states and Congress must also pass secondary laws addressing issues such as military service, taxation and political eligibility for those who opt for dual nationality.

He confirmed that the basic amendments, which passed 405 to 1 in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday, would permit Mexicans who adopt foreign citizenship to keep their Mexican passports, their Mexican nationality and their property or businesses in Mexico.

But he added that other details already decided by Mexico’s lawmakers include bans on dual nationals holding the offices of Mexican president, Cabinet secretary, federal deputy or senator, supreme court justice or governor; eligibility for local offices will be decided individually by Mexico’s 31 state legislatures.

He said lawmakers have also agreed that dual nationals would not be permitted to hold career military posts in Mexico. Their status would be similar to that of Mexican nationals now legally residing abroad who register with local Mexican consulates and who can serve in the Mexican army only in wartime.

The dual nationality offer, he added, would apply only to Mexican-born expatriates and their children.

Revising downward earlier government estimates, Gonzalez said new studies show that the dual nationality offer would apply to at least 4 million Mexicans who are now legally in the United States.

Of those, he said, about 2.2 million have already become U.S. citizens and would be able to restore their Mexican nationality under the amendments. The remainder qualify for U.S. citizenship and either are among the 1.2 million Mexicans who are awaiting it or the estimated 800,000 who have yet to apply for it.

“If we didn’t make this change, we saw we were going to lose these people,” Gonzalez said of the need to amend the constitution, which now forces naturalized Americans to renounce their Mexican citizenship. “We were going to have a division among Mexicans.”

Gonzalez added that the amendments also have broad ramifications in Mexico: “Indirectly, this will benefit 26 million Mexicans, including family members still living here.”

Illustrating the impact of the new law, he added that Mexican embassies and consulates were swamped with inquiries worldwide within 24 hours of the amendments’ congressional approval.

In Los Angeles, authorities at the busy Mexican Consulate across from MacArthur Park anticipate a huge demand next year from people of Mexican ancestry inquiring about dual nationality, said Jose Angel Pescador Osuna, Mexican consul general in Los Angeles.

“These are people whose lives are here, and they should be able to protect their rights here and vote here without fear of losing their rights under Mexican law,” said Pescador, whose outspokenness on the issue has earned him criticism and praise on both sides of the border.

Not only would millions of Mexican-born individuals now residing in the United States be able to retain or recover rights as Mexican nationals, Pescador noted, but the U.S.-born sons and daughters of Mexican immigrants would also be entitled to Mexican nationality. Under existing Mexican law, people born abroad of a Mexican mother or father must renounce foreign allegiances at age 18 if they want to retain Mexican nationality.

In the United States, however, criticism of the concept appears to be mounting among activists alarmed at what they consider growing Mexican government influence north of the border.

“Either you owe your allegiance to the United States of America, or you don’t,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Outraged by the Mexican congressional action, FAIR is now calling on the U.S. Congress to pass a new law requiring naturalized U.S. citizens to relinquish their previous nationality--a move that would largely void the significance of Mexico’s constitutional changes.

Fineman reported from Mexico City and McDonnell from Los Angeles.