MEXICO.- An Electoral Reform is cooking in this country. And to the debate about the disappearance of the National Electoral Institute (INE) and the elimination of plurinominal legislators, two requests from Mexicans abroad are added that for decades have been blocked or restricted by political parties:
The right of migrants to vote for other representatives besides the President of the Republic, some governors and deputies and the opportunity for them to be candidates even if they do not live in national territory .
“The political rights of migrants are recognized by the Court, but we need that recognition to be reflected in the laws, that it is not required to go to Court to fight what is their right” warned Senator José Narro Céspedes, one of the congressmen currently echoing the demand.
In the past elections, the Federal Electoral Court ruled in favor of a group of Mexicans abroad who complained that they were not allowed to be voted to represent migrants in the House of Representatives. Deputies.
Thus, their participation was included, but as an Affirmative Action within the “vulnerable” population groups, such as indigenous or disabled.
The idea now ¾explains Narro¾ is to go further and create laws that allow a system of real political integration for those close to 40 Millions of first, second, third and fourth generation migrants: They are almost a third of the population of Mexico!
Both because of the number and because of the dependence on remittances, many legislators and analysts agree that in addition to guaranteeing representation for this population, more agile mechanisms must be created for voting from outside Mexico because it has been very low.
In the 2012 they voted a little less than 100,000 Mexicans. An advance was considered because in the 2012 voted less than 60,000 and the increase was almost double, but the percentage is almost null if one takes into account that it could be millions and if it is compared with other countries.
Last year, more than 220,000 Peruvians abroad voted in the first round of the presidential election , what’s going on? Are Peruvians more democratic than Mexicans, are they more interested in electing the President of their country?
Roberto Valdovinos , former advisor to the Institute for Mexicans Abroad (IME) says that the low participation of Mexican migrants is because the country’s government has put “a series of brakes” that have not allowed Mexicans to participate adequately.
“In 2018 to vote, you had to register since March. Anyone who had not registered in March, specifically to vote abroad, could not vote in the July election; who in Mexico would do that to vote?”, he questioned.
And even more: “Imagine the case of someone who lives abroad working in the fields, how is the time, how are you even going to find out that you have to register for five months to be able to comply with the right you have as a Mexican or Mexican?”
In other electoral processes, such as the most recent one for the revocation of the mandate, themigrants had to register two months in advance in a complex and confusing registry :
First, the Mexican abroad received an email that was sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English. Then, voting was allowed only between the first and 10 of April, if and only if they had registered between 29 February or 28 February.
“All of this must end,” agrees Narro, who asked Mario Alberto Torres, Morena’s representative in the Chamber of Deputies’ Migration Commission, to include the political rights of migrants in the discussion of the open parliament that is expected to take place. the third week of May in the context of the Electoral Reform.
The migrant agenda
Those who support the inclusion of Mexicans abroad in the political life of the country agree that the binational agenda requires, in most cases, technical knowledge and specific to those who have lived outside and inside Mexico.
Deputy Torres, a resident of Los Angeles for 18 years, details that in recent times there has been moves that remittances be an opportunity to make cooperatives.
In Mexico there are three types of cooperatives provided for by law and migrant organizations from the United States are working on them: production, consumer and credit and savings cooperatives.
For the latter there is a proposal to create a “Migrant Bank” that would provide cheap credit to the communities of Mexicans abroad.
Senator Narro seconded him: “ We need a different financial instrument that helps people to save and so that people can make a a collective social investment”.
There is a precedent in San Quintín, Baja California, where a small bank was created with the support of the Natbank for an indigenous community with infrastructure.
Other issues that require binational knowledge are labor. President Joe Biden recently recognized that the United States has a labor shortage and expanded the number of visas for workers in trades (H2B) in which Mexico has a lot of opportunity.
However , both countries lack a comprehensive binational agreement that oversees the entire temporary hiring process, from recruitment to surveillance to prevent abuse by employers
For now, the Mexican legislature is looking for a skills training program that adapts to the requirements of the infrastructure plan at the door in the US.
The synergy that Mexico can create with progressive states of the American Union is another reason that pushes a greater participation of Mexicans abroad in the public life of their country.
In the environmental agenda, recalls Narro, “California, being one of the states that contributes the most to global warming, has resources through and carbon credits, which can be exchanged for sustainable productive projects in the communities of Mexico”.
That , among thousands of ideas for the two inevitably integrated nations.
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