Posted on 05/22/2006 4:28:11 PM PDT by Dubya
MEXICO CITY - If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn't be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, firefighter hero of 9-11, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn't have been allowed on the force.
Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico places daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.
In the United States, only two posts -- the presidency and vice presidency -- are reserved for the native-born.
In Mexico, non-natives are banned from those and thousands of other jobs, even if they are legal, naturalized citizens.
Foreign-born Mexicans can't hold seats in either house of the congress. They're also banned from state legislatures, the Supreme Court and all governorships. Many states ban foreign-born Mexicans from spots on town councils. And Mexico's Constitution reserves almost all federal posts, and any position in the military and merchant marine, for "native-born Mexicans."
Recently the Mexican government has gone even further. Since at least 2003, it has encouraged cities to ban non-natives from working as firefighters, police or judges.
Mexico's Interior Department, which recommended the bans as part of "model" city statutes it distributed to local officials, could cite no basis for extending the bans to local posts.
After being contacted by The Associated Press about the issue, officials changed the wording in two statutes to delete the "native-born" requirements.
"These statutes have been under review for some time, and they have, or are about to be, changed," said an Interior Department official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.
Many cities across Mexico have already enacted such bans.
Foreigners constitute a tiny percentage of the population and pose little threat to Mexico's job market.
The foreign-born make up just 0.5 percent of Mexico's 105 million people, compared with about 13 percent in the United States, which has a total population of 299 million. Mexico grants citizenship to about 3,000 people a year, compared to the U.S. average of almost a half-million.
"There is a need for a little more openness, both at the policy level and in business affairs," said David Kim, president of the Mexico-Korea Association, which represents the estimated 20,000 South Koreans in Mexico, many of them naturalized citizens.
J. Michael Waller, of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, was more blunt. "If American policy-makers are looking for legal models on which to base new laws restricting immigration and expelling foreign lawbreakers, they have a handy guide: the Mexican Constitution," he said
Some Mexicans agree their country needs to change. Others express a more common view -- a distrust of foreigners that academics say is rooted in Mexico's history of foreign invasions and the loss of territory in the 1847-48 Mexican-American War.
Speaking of the hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who enter Mexico each year, chauffeur Arnulfo Hernandez, 57, said: "The ones who want to reach the United States, we should send them up there. But the ones who want to stay here, it's usually for bad reasons, because they want to steal or do drugs."
Some say progress is being made. Mexico's president no longer is required to be at least a second-generation native-born. That law was changed in 1999 to clear the way for candidates who have one foreign-born parent, like President Vicente Fox, whose mother is from Spain.
Yup!
It's ALL true.
Could someone inform GWB about THIS?
WHY are our standards so LOW?
Because our country is run by a bunch of spinless corrupt a-holes.
That AP ran this is interesting.
And could we suggest to him that he have a new slogan: "Roundem up, heardem south!"
It's inconceivable that he does not know; therefore, he must not care.
Hypocrisy explains it all.
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