More than 25 years after Mexico started recognizing dual nationals, some U.S.-born children of Mexican immigrants are claiming citizenship in the country their parents left behind.
Jenny Aguayo-Frausto and Kevin Frausto watch the sun set over Mexico City. They are among Americans of Mexican descent who have returned to their parents’ homeland.Credit…Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times
She hid with her four boys under the cover of darkness, the distant shouts of Border Patrol agents and a helicopter droning above the hills on the San Diego-Tijuana border. The agents threatened to end a one-way trip from the United States to Mexico with arrest and deportation.
Some 37 years later, Leonor Dávila, a U.S. citizen, says she’s grateful for her life in Chicago. It’s far removed from the desolate ranches that raised her in Zacatecas, where opportunities were scarce like the weathered adobe structures in the countryside.
So it came as a surprise three years ago when her daughter, Jenny Aguayo-Frausto, who was born in the United States, told her and her husband they were leaving their lives behind to pursue a future in Mexico. For Ms. Dávila, the move was as perplexing as it was ironic.
“There are so many people who would want to come over here to the United States, and then there’s them, who don’t want to be here anymore,” Ms. Dávila said in Spanish.
Ms. Aguayo-Frausto, 30, and her husband, Kevin Frausto, 36, are part of a group of Americans of Mexican descent who, because of their ancestry, have become citizens of both countries – formalizing their Mexican-American identity some 26 years after Mexico started recognizing dual citizens.
Some simply want the bragging rights that come with having two passports, which can also open up travel opportunities to countries with more complicated relationships with the United States. Many others, like the Fraustos, however, see Mexico as a viable alternative to life in the United States – if not as an expanded playing field uninterrupted by the border.
Source: NY Times
