As their compatriots get ready to cast their ballot in the July 2 presidential election in Mexico, 10 million Mexicans living abroad will watch the vote from a distance.

Unlike Americans, French or Irish residing outside their native countries, Mexicans abroad haven’t obtained the right to vote by absentee ballot. Now, almost a year after a bill that would have granted them suffrage died in the Mexican Senate, the expatriate community is divided between those wanting to participate in the electoral process and those questioning the legitimacy of such a right.

"Many countries have structures set up to allow their expatriate population to vote," said Hector Cardenas, a graduate student at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Policy who formerly worked in the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The Mexican situation is not unique except for the large number of expatriates."

In November 1998, a commission appointed by the Federal Elections Institute issued its final report. The document showed that 83 percent of the Mexicans polled who live in the United States wished to vote in the next presidential election.

Many Mexican immigrants see their participation in the voting process as a way to bring greater awareness to the situation of Mexicans migrants.

"It would force the Mexican parties and the Mexican government to be more responsive to the needs of the Mexican people residing abroad," said Benjamin Garza, a San Jose-based activist of the Movement for Voting Rights for Mexicans Abroad.

The legislation would have added as many as 9.9 million new voters to the 58 million names featured on the Mexican electoral rolls and possibly changed the outcome of the election. Most of the Mexican immigrants left their country dissatisfied with the system, which they blamed for entrenched corruption and electoral fraud. To the supporters of the bill, this is the reason why the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) -- which has been ruling for 71 years -- squashed the plan to pass a bill that they originally backed.

"The PRI has obviously not been willing to go forward with the bill because it won’t benefit from it," said Cardenas. "People who are living abroad are less likely to empathize with the PRI than those who live in Mexico."

After the bill failed to pass in July 1999, no further legislation has been introduced. But the bill is still alive on the Mexican political scene. It is a priority in the platform of the leading opposition candidate for presidency, Vicente Fox.

The right to vote for Mexicans abroad raises many issues, including how to plan an electoral process for a large expatriate population.

"The whole organization of election day outside of Mexico has specific problems," said Cardenas. "First, because the cost is higher since you’re out of Mexico. Then there's the question of voters’ registration."

Hector Vindiola, Mexican consul for trade and investment in San Francisco, further points out the problem of voter registration. "There is no infrastructure, " he said. "It would require three to four years to register all the people."

In its final report the commission appointed by the Federal Elections Institute acknowledged that in the United States, where almost 99 percent of Mexican migrants reside, "there is no clear correspondence between the locations where Mexicans are concentrated and consulates."

But many expatriates worry less about issues tied to voting rights for Mexicans living in the United States, than about the political impact these rights will have on the Mexican-American relationship.

Many Mexican immigrants wonder about the reaction of the United States to such an electoral process, given the history of fraud in Mexican elections. Others speculate about the possibility of an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) action to identify undocumented Mexicans.

"One of the problems of granting the right to vote to Mexicans abroad has to do with the fact that many of them are still illegal immigrants" said Dwight Dyer, a Mexican doctorate student at UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science. "It can create a situation where on election day, the INS shows up at the polling booth and seizes them."

The recent Mexican law allowing dual citizenship for Mexicans born in the United States goes to the heart of the discussion. In the latest issue of Voices of Mexico, a quarterly magazine for U.S. and Canadian readers, Diego Valadés, the director of the National Autonomous University (UNAM) Legal Research Institute and former attorney general of Mexico, explored the political implications of the voting right for dual citizens living in the United States.

"U.S.-Mexican citizens, in addition to enjoying dual nationality and dual citizenship would also in many cases have dual partisan affiliation. This means that they would be subject to the influence of …vote manipulators," he wrote.

For instance, Valadés wrote, dual citizens could vote in the U.S. for "discriminatory policies restricting Mexican immigration."

Although he wishes he could vote, UC student Cardenas understands why part of the Mexican community still has doubts about the benefits of the proposal. The overwhelming number of potential Mexican voters is one of the largest in the history of voting rights for expatriate communities. In this context, defining who the stakeholders are becomes more important.

"If you vote, what is your stake?" he said, expressing the uncertainty surrounding the issue. "If you’ve been living in the U. S. for 20 years and your kids are American citizens, then why allow them to express their opinion about the economical, social and political conditions that will affect the Mexicans living in the country and not them?"