Posted on 08/15/2004 11:50:50 PM PDT by yonif
Mexico-born U.S. citizens who missed their chance to reclaim their Mexican nationality last year can try again starting today.
The Mexican government has decided to revive the doble nacionalidad, or dual nationality, program that it stopped in 2003. This time, the program will go on indefinitely.
Candidates can apply at Mexican embassies and consulates, preferably by appointment, officials with the Mexican Consulate in El Paso said. The fee will be $14.
El Pasoan Maria Caballero, 27, said she would stop by the consulate next week to check on the petition for dual nationality she started at the last minute last year. Caballero said she filed some paperwork but didn't hear from the authorities before the deadline. Caballero was naturalized seven years ago but last year she decided she wanted her Mexican rights back, she said.
Officials said dual nationals can buy property in places in Mexico where foreigners can't, can travel without visas, work and study, send a child to public school and day care, and vote, if they comply with other requirements.
"The big one would be voting. It bothers me to lose this right as a Mexican," Caballero said.
Consular officials said many people started the process too late last time and couldn't complete it because they were still missing documents by the March 30, 2003, deadline.
The program was created in 1998 by a constitutional amendment that gave Mexican natives who had become citizens of other countries five years to regain their Mexican passports.
During the five years, 4,000 people in El Paso participated in the program -- almost half of them during the frantic last two weeks. In the United States, 70,000 people regained their Mexican nationality that way.
Mexican senators said reviving the program was a way to repay Mexico's debt to its migrant workers who contribute to the Mexican economy by sending money back to their families.
The program applies to Mexico-born people who were nationalized before 1998. People who switched nationality after March 20, 1998, were granted automatic dual nationality.
That is precisely the plan. The biggest Mordida scheme ever concocted by the Conquistador thieves.
The United States should not have duel citizenship with border countries.
Makes too much mischief for elections and Social Security.
"Except for U.S. born citizens, foreign immigrants can retain their citizenship of birth and the U.S. can do nothing short of refusing their citizenship "
A naturalized citizen has to renounce his previous citizenship upon becoming a US citizen, but of course that means nothing to the country in which he was born, which will continue to grant him citizenship.
Exactly. He's encouraging pretty much all of them to become USA citizens so they can vote in our elections, take our Social Security, --- the Whole Enchilada like he calls it. This gives Mexicans great power over our country yet we have no say in theirs.
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