I’m beginning to suspect that Mark Krikorian, anti-immigration zealot par excellence, is really an Open Borders plant (another of Karl Rove’s intricate and insidious schemes, perhaps?) whose secret goal is to bring down ridicule on his nominal point of view. Not along ago he was complaining that hard working foreigners are snatching summer jobs away from lazy American teenagers. Today, in the NRO Corner, he is distressed at the prospect of voting by Mexicans. If he were lambasting many states’ failure to keep non-citizens from registering and casting ballots illegally (Mohammed Atta registered in Virginia, courtesy of the Motor Voter Law), I would agree with him. But the target of his objection is Mexican participation in Mexican elections.
The Mexican House of Representatives has just approved legislation to allow Mexicans living abroad to vote in their country’s presidential election. Mexico is one of the very few democracies that doesn’t let expatriates vote. During the long PRI ascendancy, they were regarded, I believe, as too difficult to manipulate and too prone to be influenced by the ideology of the foreigners (
But Mr. Krikorian thinks that the corrupt machine that ruled Mexico for decades had the right idea. To his mind, giving the Mexican franchise to Mexicans who live in the United States –
will promote the president’s [not clear whether he means Fox or Bush or both] implicit goal of blurring the distinction between the United States and Mexico: there will be extensive campaigning on this side of the border, with mass rallies and ads in print, radio, and even TV; hundreds of thousands of people are likely to line up at consulates to vote, with employers pressured not to punish absent workers and the Border Patrol prohibited from enforcing immigration laws, which would have a “chilling effect” on turnout; and thousands of dual citizens will make a mockery of their oaths of allegiance to the United States by voting in a foreign election.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis, many of them dual citizens, lined up to vote last month, and America somehow survived. Nor, I am confident, will Spanish language campaign commercials in Texas and California succeed in “blurring the distinction between the United States and Mexico”. The most likely major consequence will be a net pickup of votes for the PAN candidate, and, while President Fox hasn’t been the keen supporter of freedom that he once seemed, he and any likely PAN successor are vastly better than what the Mexican Left will offer as an alternative.
Whatever the pros and cons of the various sides of the immigration debate, Mr. Krikorian is fast emerging as the clown prince of the restrictionists. He would do his own cause, if it really is his cause, more good by keeping silent.
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