Mexican Website Gives Undocumented a Voice in U.S. Presidential Elections

LatinaLista — Only those people who have never traveled outside the United States, or still hold to a national isolationist philosophy, don’t understand that what happens in US politics doesn’t just stay in the U.S.
Any casual student of history knows that, as a country, our policies have always impacted other countries — on some level(s).
That’s why other countries have always taken such a deep and personal interest in what happens in this country. Pick up a newspaper in a foreign capital or watch their nightly news and the amount of coverage afforded to the United States would make someone from another planet think that the whole of the United States was a suburb of that particular city.
And there is no country on earth who has a deeper personal interest in our politics than Mexico. It has reached the point to where Mexican Nationals are asking themselves:
If Mexico elected the next President of the United States, who would it be?
They have decided to find out.

A new bilingual web site, ¡México Decide! E.E.U.U. Elecciones 2008 has been created targeting Mexicans, regardless of where they live, to educate them about the US presidential elections and let them cast their votes as to who they think should be the next resident of the White House.
The site is surprisingly in-depth with complete rosters of each party’s candidates, their bios, stands on issues like the environment, abortion, border security and the Iraqi war and, of course, where they stand and what they’ve said when it comes to the issue of immigration.
Visitors to the site who want to cast a vote register and, in turn, can leave their opinion as well as say who they want to see lead the US.
The creators of the site justify their premise that Mexico should have a say in the U.S. elections because of several facts that are usually used by critics of illegal immigration. In a new twist, or actually just presented from a different perspective, the site’s creators use the same facts to bolster their own argument:

Between Mexico and the United States there exists a constant circulation of people, products and money. Within the U.S, there lives a robust Mexican population that constitutes the majority of the 11-14 million undocumented immigrants.
Forty-two percent of all new immigrants to the United States during the 1990s was Mexican.
Source: American Immigration Law Foundation, “Mexican Immigrant Workers and the U.S. Economy”
In the year 2000, Mexican immigrants represented 4% of the workers in the United States.
Source: American Immigration Law Foundation, “Mexican Immigrant Workers and the U.S. Economy”
Mexicans comprise the largest percentage of immigrants who enter the United States today. Between 2000-2005, the average annual number of immigrants to the United States was 1,299,000.
Source: Farhana Hossain, “Snapshot: Global Migration”, The New York Times
Between 2000-2005, the average annual number of immigrants who left Mexico was 797,000.
Source: Farhana Hossain, “Snapshot: Global Migration”, The New York Times

The site, though not widely known yet, has already generated some votes and thoughts:
Raymundo from Peru who has lived in New York City for the past 8 years considers himself a Democrat and votes for Obama.
Raymundo says:

“I have two jobs, I pay out of pocket for the dentist and doctor. I help clean and pick up my neighborhood. I would like to return to Peru to visit my family but I can’t. I send money home to my children and I save every dime for the day when I can bring them when I am a citizen. In the meantime, we talk every other day. With so many years working, paying bills and being an active member of the community it seems just to me that I have the right to vote. And to me, Barack Obama is the only candidate with a chance of winning who supports the undocumented. 

Rosa, originally from El Salvador, but a US citizen now sees Clinton as the next President:
Rosa says,

“Clinton seems to me to be very intelligent and smart. I’ve been here in this country for 22 years and this will be my first time to vote. I am going to vote because the United States has deteriorated a lot in the last 8 years. The dollar is low and morally this country is not in the same position as it was with (Bill) Clinton — there has to be a change. I never voted before because I didn’t feel the necessity like now and I didn’t think Bush was going to be re-elected the last time! I would like to return to the Clinton years.” 

Julio Fernandez is from Spain and he sums up how the rest of the world feels about this election:

“A change in administration is urgent. Not just for the USA, but for the rest of the world!”

Whether it’s liked or not, Mexico is bound so tightly to the United States that it’s natural that they feel the way they do.
It’s unnatural for us to think they shouldn’t.