Dual Nationality
| Overview
Inputs from the Politics of Today
|
It is also called Indelible Nationality. On
March 20, 1998, a new Nationality Act went into effect in Mexico, implementing
constitutional amendments approved by the Congress a year earlier.
It provides that persons born Mexican citizens will not lose their nationality
by becoming citizens of another country -- meaning mostly the United States.
Tailored carefully, avoiding any direct conflict with forces to the north,
it takes off from a desire to preserve the rights, within Mexico, of Mexicans
naturalized in the United States. Much of the impulse to the change
had little to do with any impact on U.S. society. But private comment
on both sides of the border has insisted on understanding the measure more
broadly.
The new law created something different from what has long operated as "dual nationality" for migrants. Many governments have long insisted that their young citizens cannot escape armed service just by swearing allegiance to a foreign government. Many have allowed individuals to retain the passport of that nationality, even after they have become citizens of another country, so that they now hold both passports. But Mexico has now said that a national who takes out foreign citizenship may cease to exercise political rights in Mexico, yet not lose the label of nationality, or with it a range of other benefits, such as eligibility for social services, or the right to own property anywhere in Mexico. The Mexican consul in Los Angeles declared, half jokingly, that the new law was a move toward the "Reconquista" of the Southwest. Anti-immigrant organizations in the United States picked up on the speech, some now referring to all immigrants as Reconquistas, as if sent to implement an aggression designed by President Ernesto Zedillo. Some speakers in Mexico give the change a more philosophical interpretation. To one, Mexico has revised the very concept of nation: it is now an entity that extends beyond geographic borders. This notion is hardly new in history, since it has been asserted by national leaders out to use emigrants as agents of the territorial state. Its revival now reasserts the state as a player on the transnational field, versus both the corporation and the migrant family. |
In other measures, the Mexican Congress has moved to allow citizens who live outside the country -- but who have not become citizens of another nation -- to vote in national elections. The measure is controversial within Mexico, backed most strongly by the center-left opposition party, the PRD, which believes that most Mexicans abroad would support its candidates. The government party, the PRI, and the conservative opposition party, the PAN, seem to have gone along with the measure in order to avoid offending potential voters. Only in some cases have politicians suggested that the vote might be extended to persons who have become naturalized citizens of the United States. In any case, the measure would require physical arrangements for registration and balloting abroad, which would not be easy.
There are unresolved questions about how all this would relate to U.S. law. On a purely conceptual level, the distinction between types of citizenship is known to the U.S. Constitution. A "citizen" (meaning what Mexican terminology calls a "national") is anyone born or naturalized in the United States, while only persons who meet other requirements may exercise the specific rights to vote and hold office. Questions of dual nationality are regulated by statute law, and by State Department regulations -- and by administrative practice in which officials avoid trouble by not insisting on philosophical consistency.
Home | Site Map
| Inputs from Politics | Inputs
from History | The Future of New/Old Nations
Copyright 1998 The Intermountain History Group, intermtn@sprynet.com.
All rights reserved.