Jose Gonzalez is 74 years old and was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. When trying to renew his Mexican voter ID a few weeks ago, the Mexican consulate in San Diego told him he wasn’t Mexican anymore.
Imagine his surprise and confusion. Gonzalez reached out to NBC 7 and Telemundo 20 Responds, and the team was able to find out how he lost it and how you can reinstate your Mexican citizenship.
Gonzalez’s mom brought him to the U.S. in 1965. He says he is a proud Mexican that he got his work ethic from his mom who worked very hard to raise him and his brothers and sisters as a single mom.
His first job in the U.S. was at a car wash in Los Angeles when he was 17 years old. But he spent most of his years working in the fields in California.
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In 1983, Gonzalez became a U.S. citizen and tried to enlist in the U.S. Army to learn more, he says, but he didn’t speak English, so the Army rejected him. He went back to work in anything he could. When people would ask him, “What can you do?" he says, “Everything.”
Years later, he moved his wife and children to San Diego to be closer to Mexico where he has family. He says he’s been crossing the border since — as a Mexican.
To cross to Mexico, he uses his INE ID, the Mexican electoral identification that expires next month. He decided to go to the Mexican consulate in San Diego to renew it, but he got a big surprise: Gonzalez had lost his Mexican citizenship when he became a U.S. citizen in 1983.
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Gonzalez told NBC 7 he felt really sad because, in his heart, he has always been Mexican. He was even more confused when he read on the Secretary of Foreign Relations website, “If you are Mexican, you will always be Mexican,” but below it says, "If you became a U.S. citizen before March 20th of 1998, you can recover your Mexican nationality.”
“Mexican congress promoted a change in our nationality law so that you could become a citizen of any country that you wish without losing ever Mexican nationality," said Carlos González Gutiérrez, the Consul General of Mexico in Los Angeles.
How to reinstate your Mexican citizenship
This new law allows Mexicans to have dual nationality so that they can have rights in both countries. The law is not retroactive, so if you lost your Mexican citizenship, you can recover it by presenting these documents at a Mexican consulate:
- Your Mexican birth certificate
- Official valid ID
- U.S. naturalization certificate that includes the apostille
Gonzalez doesn’t feel he lost his Mexican nationality, which doesn’t surprise Gutiérrez.
“It’s natural that people are not familiar with the history of our nationality law," Gutiérrez said.
If you were born after 1998 in the U.S., but your parents are of Mexican origin, you only have to present your U.S. birth certificate and proof that your parents are Mexican.
