100 Seek to Renew Ties With Mexico on 1st Day of New Law

Some dreamed about purchasing a retirement home in their native land. Others hoped to avert future complications with properties, inheritances or investments. Still others wanted more freedom to travel across the border without seeking visas and tourist cards.

But all shared a deep emotional attachment to Mexico that they hoped to reaffirm by means of a relatively simple paperwork transaction.

“Mexico is our roots, after all,” a beaming Neydi Garcia said as she waited at the new “Nationality” counter at the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, across the street from MacArthur Park. “We have been in this country a long time, but we can’t forget where we came from.”

She was among more than 100 people who went to the consulate Friday seeking to recoup or acquire rights as Mexican nationals on the first effective date of a historic Mexican law that allows all Mexicans to possess dual nationalities. Under previous practice, Mexican immigrants who naturalized as U.S. citizens automatically forfeited their rights as Mexican nationals.

Authorities estimate that more than 2 million Mexican-born immigrants are now U.S. citizens and have thus been stripped of Mexican nationality. Under the new law, they now have five years to reacquire that status. Also newly eligible are millions of others who are the U.S.-born offspring of Mexican immigrant fathers or mothers.

In recent years, a number of immigrant-sending countries have revised laws to allow their emigres to retain nationality. But the huge numbers of Mexican immigrants--more than 7 million now live in the United States, by far the largest group of immigrants from one nation ever residing here--are expected to elevate the ranks of dual-nationality holders to new heights.

Although reacquiring Mexican nationality has strong symbolic importance for Garcia and others, it also implies many practical benefits: Mexican nationals may buy and sell land free of the restrictions that limit foreign nationals.

Also much smoother is investment in Mexico, inheritance, attendance at public schools and access to other services and jobs.

And, in a convenience mentioned by many, Mexican nationals never need visas or tourist cards to travel to their homeland. Once certified as nationals, they are eligible for official Mexican identity cards and passports.

“It has always bothered me, that I, a native of Mexico, have to get a tourist card to go to my native land, to visit my family, just like some foreigner,” said Heladio Hernandez, 65, who has lived in the United States for 43 years, starting as a farm laborer and later becoming a real estate agent. “Now I can go back and forth with tranquillity.”

Nationality applicants pay a $12 fee upon receipt of the official Declaration of Mexican Nationality, which takes about six weeks to process, authorities said..

The nationality-seekers seemed to represent a cross-section of established Mexican immigrants. Some had entered generations ago as contract braceros, or farm workers; others arrived later as illegal immigrants, received amnesty in the 1980s and worked their way up the economic ladder.

By definition, virtually all had been in the United States for at least five years, the time it takes to acquire U.S. citizenship after becoming a legal permanent resident.

Emigdio Aceves, 75, recalled the precise day he entered the United States--Jan. 17, 1953--as a young man from the western state of Michoacan, a well-spring of immigrants to the north for more than a century. And he came legally, he was quick to point out.

“I have never disrespected a law of this country, or of Mexico,” the dignified Aceves said as he waited for his papers to be reviewed, recalling his many jobs, in farms and factories.

“I’ve worked hard, and this country has treated me well. The United States is one of the greatest countries in the world. I had opportunities here I would never have had in Mexico.”

Why, then, was he so anxious to recoup his rights as a Mexican national?

“Two pesos are worth more than one,” he quipped. “It doesn’t hurt, and maybe it could help one day.”

Although interest among Mexican immigrants is high, the dual-nationality possibilities have also enticed their U.S.-born children.

For some, acquiring status as Mexican nationals has become a way to reconnect with lost or submerged cultural attachments.

“I was born here, but I also feel close to Mexico,” said Eva Perez, 32, who accompanied her father, Emigdio Aceves, and also plans to seek status as a Mexican national.

However, her sister, Susan Ocon, 38, is more hesitant. At a time when many see resurgent opposition to immigrants, she wonders aloud if those with dual nationalities could themselves some day be targeted.

“What happens if one day they decide the United States is too crowded, and the ones who have two nationalities have someplace else to go so they should leave?” she asked.

Both U.S. and Mexican authorities say such a scenario is far-fetched. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that dual nationality is “a status long recognized in the law.”

For Maria de la Luz Armijo, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Monterrey, the attraction is the possibility of sending her daughter, Diana, 14, to a university in Mexico. The costs are much less, she said.