Is the Onion based in Minneapolis?

And, did one of their stories get loose and end up in a Minneapolis indie paper? The article "Mexicans Anticipate Consulate: Proposed center would be boon to immigrant community" would be funny if it weren't so sad. I've saved off a copy in case it gets re-written, and here are some excerpts:

...Mexican president Vicente Fox announced in June that Minnesota would be the next state to host a Mexican consulate.

For Fox, the first Mexican head of state to visit the region, the trip was intended not only to strengthen trade relations between Mexico and Minnesota, but also to strengthen his connection to Minnesota's roughly 96,000 Mexican immigrants.

...Mexican community [...] turned out in such force to see Fox that he made his announcements in Spanish instead of English as planned...

[...a member of a Racial Identity group explains things to our reporter...]

Consulates help provide immigrants with anything involving government authorization, including identification, marriage certifications and work permits -- any legal papers necessary to obtain an education, reunite a family or find a good job.

"In addition to general immigration-type authorizations, one of the strongest services it provides is a matricular consular [MC], which is a Mexican government-issued ID," Fuentes said. ["FBI Official Says Matricula Consular Card Is Security Threat"; see also this backgrounder --LW] "This ID is very helpful because many immigrants don't have access to state-issued IDs. In Minnesota, if you need a driver's license, they ask you for your social security number, so if you don't have a number and the two other forms of ID they require, you don't have access to a driver's license. In the absence of a driver's license, then, what can you use to get basic things like a bank account? The matricular consular serves this purpose."

Why all the subterfuge then? Oh, yeah, I forgot. They aren't "immigrants," they're illegal aliens. Sorry, I momentarily forgot that semantic game we were playing.

Here are the excerpts about the city's "leaders:"

In recognition of the growing Mexican population and in anticipation of the potential consulate, in 2003 the city passed a resolution deeming the MC as valid for all city purposes... [once again: "FBI Official Says Matricula Consular Card Is Security Threat" --LW]

Minneapolis city officials had offered the consulate 5,000 square feet of rent-free space in Lake Street's renovated Sears building, but were turned down. (WHEN?) City officials said they will put together another official offer soon.

The "WHEN?" is in the original article; I assume the author meant to fill that in at a later date but was so excited about the new consulate she forgot.

What about an unintentionally scary quote? Here's one:


"We could start a new country called US-Mexico … with all of the Mexicans that are here," laughs Teresa Ortiz, a worker's rights program director with the Resource Center of the Americas.

Yeah, that's funny.

The article provides a comments section; at post time there are five comments. They're all mostly responsible comments detailing what trouble Minneapolis is setting itself up for. The comment I left is in the extended entry.

From this: Los Angeles County school districts recently received a gift of 27,000 textbooks written for 1st- through 6th-graders in Mexico. "About 45% of our students are Hispanic," a Los Angeles County elementary school teacher specialist said. "It's beautiful for all of our kids to have access to that." Colorado schools received 90,000 textbooks last year, the most of any state. The Mexican consul general has contacted Wyoming to offer Spanish books and instruction guides there, on subjects ranging from math to geography.

Do we really want "immigrant" children learning about history and other subjects from a Mexican perspective?

From this: At a ceremony commemorating the opening of a new $8 million Mexican Consulate [in Chicago], Fox also called on municipalities to recognize cards handed out by Mexican consulates as legal forms of identification... Opponents contend the ID cards, called matricular consular, allow illegal immigrants access to services they aren't eligible for... "We are Mexicans that live in our territories and we are Mexicans that live in other territories," he said in a 20-minute speech in Spanish. "In reality, we are 120 million people that live together and are working to construct a nation."

So, Fox is saying that all Mexicans - even Mexican-Americans - are part of the Mexican Nation. Note also that the Matricula Consular cards are considered a security threat by the FBI.

From this: in the 1990s, Mexico embarked on a campaign of extending its political authority into the United States - not just over Mexican immigrants, but also naturalized and native-born Americans of Mexican ancestry. There are 10 million Mexican-born people in this country (including 5 million illegals) plus more than 10 million additional Americans of Mexican descent...

There's nothing secret about this effort. President Vicente Fox once referred to himself as president of all 118 million Mexicans - the 100 million in Mexico and the (then-)18 million in the United States, the majority of whom are U.S. citizens. And this is a long-term proposition for them: In June 2001, Juan Hernandez, former head of Fox's cabinet-level office for relations with Mexicans abroad, said on ABC's "Nightline," "I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think, 'Mexico first.'"

Wake up Minneapolis.