Julio César Aragon travels today with other Mexicans who live abroad to discuss absentee voting and other issues with the Mexican president.

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, November 28, 2004

BY KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Julio César Aragon has a few concerns he would like to relate to Mexican President Vicente Fox, including immigration reform in the United States and allowing Mexicans who live here to vote in the Mexican elections.

This week, Aragon might have the opportunity to do that directly, when he and 99 other consejeros (advisers) to the "Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior" meet with President Fox, in Mexico City.

Aragon, the president of the Mexican Association of Rhode Island, was scheduled to leave Providence today to fly to Mexico with another Instituto representative, from Boston.

The group will present "the agenda of the Mexicans who live outside Mexico," says Aragon. "I have a letter with our concerns -- for immigration, with the money, with the Mexican vote. This meeting is going to be with the Mexican president, at his house."

The four-day meeting is to start tomorrow: the group is scheduled to meet with Fox at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

Aragon plans to present the letter stating his concerns to Fox. The matter of immigration status ranks top among them, he said.

As of 2003, an estimated 10 million Mexican immigrants were living in the United States, according to U.S. Census data. Approximately half are legal, and half are undocumented, according to Mexican officials.

Referring to Mexicans who are undocumented, Aragon said, "We need something. We need to push the American government, with [President] Bush."

Mr. Bush has outlined a plan to revamp the country's immigration laws that would help some 8 million undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status as temporary guest workers for three years. The Republican-controlled Congress did not act on Mr. Bush's proposal this year.

The message to Fox, Aragn says that if Mexicans left for even one weekend, "the place would be a mess" because there would be few workers left to clean the place.

Aragon says he will also recommend to Fox "that he give to us the right to vote in 2006 for Mexican president. To allow us to vote from the United States -- to cast our vote in the Mexican consulate's residence."

More than 60 countries -- including the United States -- allow their citizens living abroad the right to vote in elections, but Mexicans living abroad have historically been barred from casting absentee ballots in their country's elections.

"The Mexicans who live in the exterior, we are the second economy of Mexico, after the oil," said Aragon.

Quoting the Bank of Mexico, the Associated Press reported last week that Mexicans living and working in the United States sent $12.42 billion to their homeland in the first nine months of this year.

Those reports say that tally is equivalent to 81 percent of Mexico's annual income from crude-oil exports, and that last year, money sent to Mexico from Mexicans in the United States "surpassed foreign investments to become the second-most-important source of revenue, after oil."

Alfonso Zemeo Nieto, press attache at the Mexican Embassy, in Washington, D.C., says the voting issue "has been debated for a couple of years" in Mexico.

"What I can tell you is that President Fox sent an initiative to the Congress on the 15th of June this year. That initiative is the executive one -- the president's proposal to regulate the vote of Mexicans abroad."

The Mexican Congress is debating the president's proposal, as well as others offered by members of different political parties, said Nieto.

Karen Lee Ziner can be reached at (401) 277-7375, or at kziner [at] projo.com