There's a lot of racism swirling around the immigration "debate", and not always of the kind that's obvious. Certainly, some of those who oppose or support various forms of immigration are indeed racially-motivated.

However, one of the more hidden varieties comes from those who think of Mexicans as just those happy smiling serf laborers out in the fields picking their "cheap" lettuce. Those so afflicted don't think that, for instance, the Mexican government could be capable of hatching a devious plot such as that described in Georgie Anne Geyer's "Mexican Plan Puts American Values to the Test". While those with this affliction attribute everything including the phases of the moon to the machinations of Karl Rove, they would have trouble getting their minds around the possibility that the leaders of those happy field workers might actually have such a plan:

...In 1995, I was in Mexico City interviewing two accomplished Mexican diplomats, one of them being Ambassador Alejandro Carrillo Castro, who had been Mexico's consul general in Chicago. He had put forth the idea of "dual citizenship" for Mexicans in the United States. The State Department encouraged it, and the new age was born. No longer did Mexican immigrants have to choose -- and thus began the development of the plan.

When in Mexico again last November, I saw the next steps. I dropped in at the Foreign Ministry to see Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, head of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad. He told me: "The basic concept is that the Mexican nation goes beyond the borders that contain Mexico. You can feel part of our nation without being on our territory.

"For the first time, we are exporting our politics. Many Mexicans now live 'transnational' lives, with one foot in our country and one foot in the other. This contributes to everyone's well-being."

Soon, Mexican candidates were traveling to Los Angeles to run for Mexican positions. Among the dual citizens there, they were asking the immigrants to influence their families "back home." At the same time, the passage of NAFTA bred more outward-looking attitudes. And a new breed of consuls with a different profile, highly politicized, were suddenly found across the United States. Mexicans in America could now "force anti-immigrant American politicians to pay a price," Gonzales continued.

Proof that these Mexican efforts were carefully and often cynically calculated according to American sensitivities was shown in the institute's hesitation to have Mexican citizens seen in voting lines -- in America -- voting for Mexican candidates.

"My most serious concern was to open the ballot boxes in Pilsen in Chicago and have lines of people voting for Mexican politicians," Gonzales remarked seriously. "The advantage of the system we set up -- Mexicans voting through the mail -- is that it goes under the political radar."

In short, what we have is a new ethnic-political situation totally unlike anything in America's past, except perhaps the 1920s German Bund and the present-day Israeli lobby. Both made and make strong political demands on their American members in the name of "the old country." Other national groups represented in America -- Polish, Lithuanian, British, French, etc. -- are more cultural organizations.

But with the Mexican immigrants, it is ineffably more difficult. Their homeland is often only an hour or two hours' flight away, and of course they can simply walk across the border. Their homeland hangs onto them. Still another dramatic example: Mexican President Vicente Fox recently put ads in American papers asserting Mexico should "participate in the design, management, supervision and evaluation" of any American guest worker program...

(Via this.)