Ocotlan Special Edition – Part Three

Mexico might loosen law to boost flow of expatriate cash

Photography: Greg A. Cooper
Story: M.E. Sprengelmeyer
Reprint by Permission Ventura County Star
April 6, 1997

OCOTLAN, Mexico – Ramiro Mares gets choked up when asked where his allegiances lie.

He lived in Ventura County about 30 years before health problems and homesickness drew him back to his hometown south of the border.

“If the United States called me to war, I’d go. I love the United States,” Mares said, standing on a balcony overlooking the house where he grew up. “America is my country, but Mexicanos are my people.”

It’s a common sentiment on both sides of the border for the families who have split their lives between the two countries. That’s why the Mexican government is creating a “dual-nationality” status for Mexicans living abroad.

The change could affect about 2 million people who lost their Mexican citizenship when they became Americans, and about 6.6 million U.S.-born residents with one or more Mexican-born parents.

The move marks a dramatic reversal for Mexico, which has downplayed the importance of expatriates by subjecting them to the same restrictions as other “foreigners.” But officials eager to spur investment in desperately poor Mexico are now acknowledging the economic ties that have been obvious to everyone else.

In places like Ocotlan, a city of about 155,000 some 60 miles south of Guadalajara, folks knew the value of those ties. Through word of mouth from those who had gone before, many would land their first jobs in the United States on the strawberry farms and lemon orchards of Ventura County, 1,700 miles to the northwest.

Most promised to return to their Mexican hometowns once they found their fortunes. Just like waves of emigrants from Italy, Poland and other European countries earlier this century, many of the first-generation Mexican emigrants have returned, said University of Pennsylvania sociologist Douglas Massey, who has studied Mexican emigration patterns.

“The scale is greater in Mexico because of geography, but the phenomenon is the same,” he said.

But each year, surveys show that fewer of those who leave for the United States end up coming back, said Wayne Cornelius, research director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

If too many expatriates cut their ties, the fragile Mexican economy could weaken even further. Mexican officials estimate that emigres send about $4 billion back to their home communities each year – an especially vast contribution considering that factory workers in Mexico earn an average of about $2 per hour, one-sixth of their American counterparts.

The dual-nationality constitutional amendment is largely symbolic.

“It says if you’re born Mexican, you’re Mexican, and it doesn’t matter if a person acquires another nationality,” said Luz Elena Bueno, the newly installed Mexican consul in Oxnard.

It is not the same as citizenship, which gives people the right to vote. Mexicans living in the United States would continue to pay U.S. taxes. However, with a legally recognized dual nationality, Mexican-born expatriates and their children could retain more property rights in Mexico.

For now, those rights are limited. Foreigners are banned from owning property within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the borders, and within 50 kilometers of either coast.

The dual-nationality measure is meant to strengthen the emotional bond between emigrants and Mexico, as well as to spur their investments in their home regions, Bueno said.

“I think all Mexicans have families outside of the border,” Bueno said. “We are accepting that, and accepting the social matters and the reality of life.”

The coming change has angered some people on the U.S. side of the border. They foresee Mexican-born legal residents seeking U.S. citizenship to keep their welfare benefits – even as they retain their allegiance to Mexico.

“I think the least fortunate people who are willing to pledge their exclusive allegiance to this country are the ones we should protect,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly, a leader in the effort for tighter immigration controls.

Gallegly believes that welfare funds make up a large portion of the money sent back to Mexico each year. The dual-nationality legislation is just an attempt to maintain that flow, he said.

“It’s not coincidental. Give me a break,” Gallegly said. “It’s a method of changing their own laws to receive de facto foreign aid. What else does the $4 billion represent?”

The U.S. Congress can’t do anything to stop the change in the Mexican constitution, but Gallegly said he and others plan to study legal measures to dilute its effects.

There has been only a smattering of opposition to the dual-nationality legislation in Mexico. The lone dissenter in the Chamber of Deputies’ 405-1 vote called those who leave Mexico traitors, but the change is expected to be ratified by Mexico’s 31 state legislatures within months.

“It’s recognizing reality, and the reality is that there’s a large and constantly growing permanent population of expatriates in the U.S.,” said Cornelius, the San Diego researcher. “It’s recognition that these people are on the U.S. side for the long term and it’s in Mexico’s interest to encourage them to maintain an emotional tie and investment ties.”

Those emotional ties have always been strong, said Jose Melgoza, who lived three decades in Ventura County before moving back to Mexico in 1996.

“If I’m here or in China or wherever, I’m Mexicano,” he said, sitting inside a posh restaurant near Lake Chapala in Ocotlan.” I don’t think there is any Mexican who went anywhere for a long time who did not want to come back here.”

[Part Two][Part Four]