VIVA LA AMERICA: I take the Mexicans-are-taking-over pieces in places like National Review and WorldNetDaily only half-seriously, or less, but this doesn't sound good:

Writing in National Review (October 12, 1998) Jorge Amselle (like Linda Chavez, a pro-immigration Latino Republican) warned that, "The Mexican government through its promotion of bilingual education and of dual nationality and voting is actively subverting the assimilative process of Americanization…."

Amselle was referring to the official Mexican government policy of acercamiento ("getting closer" or "establishing a bond") to "Mexican communities abroad," meaning both Mexican citizens living in the United States and Mexican Americans who are U.S. citizens. This policy was started by the old PRI regime and has been considerably expanded by Fox. The spirit of this policy is exemplified by Juan Hernandez, a Texas-born Mexican-American dual citizen, who is Fox's cabinet minister for Mexicans Abroad.

Hernandez told Nightline that "we are betting" that Mexican-Americans who are American citizens (even after several generations) will "think Mexico First." Hernandez and other Mexican officials continually repeat the refrain that Fox is the leader of 120 million Mexicans, 100 million in Mexico and 20 million in the United States. Since this concept would, by definition, include not only Mexican migrants who sometimes work north of the Rio Grande, but also millions of American citizens of Mexican descent, many of whom were born in the United States — it is clearly in contradiction to traditional American principles of civic assimilation and immigrant loyalty.

That Hernandez guy is a Texan; I thought Texas Mexicans were different from California Mexicans in being better assimilated and not crying out for the Old Country. Am I mistaken? As for this offering dual citizenship deal, I mean, other countries do it --I think my mom is eligible for Irish dual citizenship as the granddaughter of Irish people. But nobody questions Irish Americans doing that, I guess because nobody doubts their loyalty (I doubt their attachment to a country they've mostly never seen, but whatever.) So I don't know if doubting the intentions of Mexican people is a double standard in action or real suspicions of the Mexican government trying to get the feds to pay benefits for their people. That "think Mexico first" thing is not too heartening, but, again, no one gets on Irish or Italian people obsessed with their ethnicity --so I dunno.