MEXICO CITY — Ramona Dominguez de Felix is 74 now, but she vividly recalls her father's stories: how he was shot in the shoulder during the Mexican Revolution and met his wife in a hospital while he recovered, and how they crossed into California as war refugees in 1915.
Although she was born in the United States in 1923 and has lived much of her life in San Diego, Dominguez still keeps pictures of revolutionary hero Pancho Villa, and her ties to her ancestral land remain strong. Yet during her frequent visits to Mexico, she has had to enter the country as a tourist, and she could not buy her dream retirement home on the Tijuana coast.
That changes today, when a Mexican law takes effect allowing Dominguez and millions of Mexican-born Americans and their children to hold Mexican nationality as well as U.S. citizenship.
Analysts say the law could have far-reaching practical effects--even potentially reshaping the flows of people and money between the United States and Mexico--and might have cross-border political repercussions as well.
The Nationality Act revokes the previous rule that took away Mexican nationality from those who became citizens of another country. Furthermore, the new act broadens eligibility for nationality to include children of Mexican-born people. And the law is retroactive: Those who would have met the revised terms in the past may now claim back their Mexican nationality. Those eligible have five years to apply.
The law permits Mexican dual nationality but not dual citizenship, a distinction that will prevent dual nationals from voting in Mexican elections or holding high office here. Some Mexican Americans are now pushing for full voting rights in Mexican elections.
Among the most significant changes in the new law is the removal of investment restrictions imposed on foreigners in Mexico, which some expect to unleash greater capital flows by Mexican nationals to Mexico.
For example, Dominguez now plans to buy her coastal retirement home. Foreigners are barred from buying property within 62 miles of the frontier or 31 miles of the coast for national security reasons--a law written with Mexico's loss of half its territory to the United States in the 1800s still very much in mind.
