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 Editorials | Opinions | December 2005 
Mexican Expatriate Voters Can Vote 'No' with Their Feet
 Elias - Lompac Record
Maybe, just maybe, Mexico's decision to let all its expatriates now living in America vote in Mexican elections won't matter very much. Maybe all the questions about dual loyalties among immigrants will become moot.
If that's how it turns out during next year's Mexican presidential election, it will be good for those expatriates, whether they are illegal immigrants, legal residents of the United States or American citizens.
For sure, Mexican officials were flabbergasted when the first foray of some of that country's top politicians into California produced virtually no response at all.
That effort consisted of a political platform forum staged during the fall by Mexico's ruling National Action Party (known by its Spanish-language initials PAN) in eastern Los Angeles County. Present were the party's national president, Manuel Espono, Gov. Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, of Guanajuato state, and Mexico City Sen. Cecilia Romero.
But only about 30 people turned out for a session where party officials had expected hundreds of immigrants from all around America. Their expectations were high because this was the first chance for both Mexican-Americans and immigrants who are not American citizens to influence the platform of one of their homeland's two major political parties.
The money those émigrés send home was one reason the politicians expected a large crowd in a 2,000-seat auditorium that was a sea of vacant yellow seats, with just a few local party activists occupying part of the front rows. Immigrants to America sent more than $15 billion home to Mexico last year, a big reason why Mexican officials believe they are vitally interested in their homeland.
The expatriates make up about 10 percent of Mexico's total citizenship, and recent polls indicate many more Mexicans would like to join them here. One summertime survey showed 40 percent of all Mexicans would prefer to live in the U.S.A.
Maybe that sentiment was behind the lack of any significant turnout for PAN's forum, which got a moderate amount of advance publicity in the Spanish-language press of this country. Maybe many Mexicans - including the vast majority of those now here - want to put their political links to that country behind them, while still sending home cash for their families.
Maybe there's wide agreement with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the son of immigrants, who said in an interview last year that, “Most of us don't want to go back to Mexico and we don't want any part of this country reverting to Mexico. We know we are a lot better off being Americans.”
This could explain why halfway through the ongoing Mexican effort to register émigrés as absentee voters, barely 3,000 of the eligible millions had bothered to sign up.
This phenomenon baffles Mexican politicians. For sure, the PAN kingpins dispatched to hold their party's first major meeting on American soil were both astonished and miffed.
Espino, his party's second-ranking official after President Vicente Fox and himself mentioned at times as a potential presidential candidate, was plainly vexed. He left the forum more than five hours before its scheduled end, possibly feeling he'd have spent his time more profitably at one of the five other party platform sessions staged the same day in Mexico.
But neither PAN nor the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for more than 70 years before Fox's year-2000 upset win, will give up seeking expatriate votes.
If a significant portion of the 15 million Mexican citizens or children of Mexican citizens now living in this country were to actively favor one party or the other, they could almost certainly decide next year's election outcome. All of them will be allowed to vote for the first time in that election if they register by mid-January. Members of the Mexican Congress estimated during their debate last spring over giving expatriates the vote that about 5 million would participate.
One problem for the Mexican politicians: Once someone becomes the official nominee of a party, he or she can no longer campaign anywhere outside Mexico. This could make it hard for any candidate to arouse much enthusiasm here.
That's what anyone interested in the long-term well-being of Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants here should be hoping. For the more interested immigrants become in the politics of their homeland, the more energy they expend there, the less interested and energetic will be their involvement in their new country.
With Mexican-Americans just now expanding their role in American politics, the more they ignore those of Mexico, the better.
Elias is author of “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It.” His email address is tdelias@aol.com |
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