MEXICO-US:
Immigrants' Votes Sought-After on Both Sides of Border

Diego Cevallos


MEXICO CITY,  (IPS) - It is not only U.S. politicians who have the votes of Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants in mind, but political leaders on this side of the border as well.

That is due to discussion of an initiative that might make it possible for Mexican nationals living in the United States to vote in Mexico's presidential elections.

Of the 38.8 million people of Latin American origin or descent in the United States, 25.4 million are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, and of that total, 9.9 million were born in Mexico.

In the 2000 U.S. presidential elections, some 7.5 million ''Latinos'' registered to vote, and 5.9 million actually did so.

That makes Mexican immigrants ''a magnet for many politicians in Mexico and the United States, due to their growing political influence and power,'' Fabián Cáceres, at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), told IPS.

Last month, Bush and groups of lawmakers submitted different bills aimed at legalising the situation of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Observers say the bills arose from an interest in capturing the ''Latino'' vote in the November presidential elections.

The Mexican government also launched a series of consultations in January with a view to drafting a new law that would allow Mexican immigrants in the United States to vote in Mexico's next presidential elections, in 2006.

If the bill makes it through Congress, voters living outside Mexico would amount to between 15 and 20 percent of all voters.

In late January, Mexican officials toured 10 U.S. cities with large immigrant populations to promote the initiative, holding meetings with organisations representing the community of people with roots in Mexico.

The possibility that citizens living abroad might be allowed to vote in Mexico's elections began to be discussed in 1998, when Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute set up a commission to study the question.

Today, the government and legislators say they are ready to draft the bill, which should be finished by the middle of the year at the latest.

In the 1990s, the number of Latinos of voting age in the United States grew 25 percent, to more than 20 million.

According to the Almanac of Latino Politics 2002-2004, sponsored by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, there are sizeable Latino communities in every state in the United States, who exercise increasing political influence.

It was not on a whim that President George W. Bush periodically addressed audiences in Spanish during the campaign that led him to the presidency in 2000.

Several of the Democratic Party hopefuls are doing the same today in the race for the party's presidential nomination.

In January, the president, his Republican Party, and the Democrats all presented plans to regularise the labour situation of millions of undocumented immigrants.

The proposals were largely welcomed in Mexico, although there was some scepticism on the part of those who saw them as merely arising from electioneering purposes.

''It has yet to be seen if the immigration bills will actually lead to anything concrete, or if they end up trapped in the broad offer of electoral promises,'' said Cáceres.

Mexico's next presidential elections are still a long way off, but more and more local political leaders are travelling to the United States, where their priority is to meet with immigrant groups.

''Immigrants will play a decisive role in defining the political future of Mexico and the United States, no one denies that now,'' said the analyst.

The number of people in the United States who are Mexican by birth grew more than 100 percent over the past decade, from 4.3 million in 1993 to 9.9 million in 2003, according to U.S. census statistics. Half of them lack residency permits, and most work in agriculture, factories and the construction industry.

Those nearly 10 million immigrants are now potential voters in Mexico's next presidential elections.

Last year, Mexicans abroad, the great majority of whom live in the United States, set a new record in the remittances sent home, which totalled over 12 billion dollars -- the largest amount of expatriate remittances received by any country in the world.

''Immigrants, who in the past were looked down on and scorned, are now at the forefront, and no politician who is at all informed can ignore that fact, either in the United States or in Mexico,'' said Cáceres.