Bloomberg
By Eric Martin and Nacha Cattan
March 21, 2016
Mexico
is mounting an unprecedented effort to turn its permanent residents in
the U.S. into citizens, a status that would enable them to vote --
presumably against Donald Trump.
Officially,
Mexico says it respects U.S. sovereignty and has no strategy to
influence the result of the presidential race. Yet Mexican diplomats are
mobilizing for the first time to assist
immigrants in gaining U.S. citizenship, hosting free workshops on
naturalization.
"This
is a historic moment where the Mexican consulate will open its doors to
carry out these types of events in favor of the Mexican community,"
Adrian Sosa, a spokesman for the consulate
in Chicago, said before an event on March 19. In Dallas, about 250
permanent residents attended the consulate’s first "citizenship clinic"
in February and another 150 in its second in March. In Las Vegas, the
turnout topped 500.
Underscoring
the fine line that separates participation from interfering in another
country’s election, Sosa noted that the consulate only hosts the event
but it’s community organizations
who offer the advice.
Mexico
may have the most at stake but it’s not alone among U.S. allies
bewildered by -- and worried about -- the reality-television star’s
success in the Republican primaries. Trump, who
launched his campaign with invective directed at Mexico and a promise
to build a border wall (with a “big beautiful door”), identified himself
last week as his own top foreign-policy adviser.
"I’m
speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and
I’ve said a lot of things," Trump said on MSNBC when asked who he speaks
with consistently on foreign policy. "My
primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this
stuff."
With
even senior U.S. Republicans, such as 2012 presidential candidate Mitt
Romney, pledging to contest Trump’s nomination to the end, views from
other major capitals comprise both concern
and calm. An official close to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who
asked not be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly said a
Trump presidency would be a risk for the global economy and security.
Trump has targeted Japan, along with Mexico
and China, as nations where the U.S. is "getting absolutely crushed on
trade."
The
government in China still believes it’s too early to focus on Trump
given that he hasn’t yet won the Republican nomination, according to a
Foreign Ministry official who asked not to be
named. The sentiment is shared in France, where President Francois
Hollande’s administration says that the U.S. election takes a backseat
to addressing migrant crisis, the war in Syria and terrorism threats.
Right to Vote
Joel
Diaz doesn’t want to wait to see how it all turns out. The
Mexican-American, who has been a permanent resident of the U.S. for six
years, arrived at the Mexican consulate in Chicago
on Saturday with his wife and four adult sons to register all of them
as U.S. citizens in order to vote against Trump.
"We’re
very worried," Diaz, 47, an evangelical pastor, said. "If he wins there
will be a lot of damage against a lot of people here, and to us as
Hispanics, as Mexicans."
Laura
Espinosa, deputy consul in Mexico’s consulate in Las Vegas, said the
main goal of the program is citizenship, and while that includes the
right to vote, the government doesn’t press
people to do so. "Those who use this to vote, that’s up to each
individual," said Espinosa, who confirmed that most consulates have
begun citizenship campaigns. "We don’t have any opinion on that, because
that would be totally interfering in internal affairs
of the country."
The
government in Mexico City is holding off on engaging the Trump campaign
directly until he becomes the nominee, said Francisco Guzman, chief of
staff to Mexican President Enrique Pena
Nieto. Speaking with reporters on March 1, Guzman said the government
plans to communicate with the campaigns of the nominees once they’re
chosen and try to dispel what it considers misinformation about Mexico
and Mexicans.
Campaign Rhetoric
The
public-relations offensive now under way includes using news outlets
and social media to highlight the strides Mexicans have made in
business, the arts and academia in the U.S., said
Paulo Carreno, the former spokesman of Citigroup Inc.’s Mexico unit who
oversees the country’s international branding strategy.
Promoting
Mexico in the U.S., from its scholars to artists, is meant "not to
influence an election, but a whole generation and those that follow,"
Carreno said in an e-mailed response to
questions. "The strategy will be an important anchor in our consular
network in the country."
While
Guzman said the administration understands the difference between
campaign rhetoric and governing proposals, Pena Nieto this month in an
interview with newspaper El Universal compared
Trump’s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
The urgency and their numbers underscore why Mexican-Americans can have an impact.
About
12 million Mexicans live in the U.S. and almost half lack legal status,
according to a November study by the Pew Research Center. About 2.7
million legal Mexican permanent resident of the U.S. are eligible to apply to become citizens, according to The
New Americans Campaign, a nonpartisan group that helps people access
naturalization services.
Ali
Noorani, executive director of National Immigration Forum, a
non-partisan Washington-based policy group that advocates on behalf of
immigrants, said Trump’s rhetoric and proposals have
spurred interest in registering to vote among Mexican immigrant
communities, particularly in Nevada, Colorado and Virginia.
Boosting
turnout among immigrant voters could help tip the scale in the
election, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs
at Princeton University.
"Trump
is exactly the kind of Republican who could mobilize legalized
immigrant voters and others sympathetic to liberalized immigration
policy," Zelizer said in an e-mailed response to questions.
"This has been one issue where he has not been very vague and taking an
extremely tough and aggressive stance. I suspect that if he was the
nominee you could see very high turnout in certain states for Democrats
as a result of this issue."
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