ShareThisDespite an economic downturn and fear of drug-trafficking violence gripping Mexico, officials there say they expect up to 1 million Mexican nationals and their children to return to their homeland to be with family for the Christmas break. It's about the same number as last year, officials estimated.
The annual holiday flow is especially strong from California, home to the nation's largest population of legal residents and Mexican Americans. At a recent weekend Mexican Consulate "mobile" service offered in Modesto, Calif., dozens lined up to request passports to have in hand, in case of an emergency.
"Just in case," said Jose Natividad, a landscaping foreman who lives in Galt, Calif. and attended the weekend service so that he wouldn't miss a day of work.
Natividad, a Mexican immigrant, is a U.S. citizen now, but his two teenage sons, Jose, 19, and Marco, 15, still have only green cards -- ID documents for legal permanent residents. Natividad wanted them to have Mexican passports to ensure they could prove their identity crossing borders by land or air.
Crossing borders legally within North America, or the United States, Canada and Mexico, was once a journey that didn't necessarily require a passport. Americans often presented driver's licenses and birth certificates as substitutes, and legal permanent residents showed green cards.
But the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, passed by Congress in 2004, is gradually tightening rules for documents that must be shown to travel by air and by land.
To travel by air, it is recommended that citizens of all three North American countries hold passports, as well as any necessary visa or residency status ID. Green cards can still legally serve as identification, among others that must also be shown, but airline personnel already are demanding to see passports.
Travelers can avoid a lot of confusion and delays at airports and land ports of entry if they have a passport, said Alejandra Bologna, the Mexican consul general in Sacramento.
For Heriberto Yapez, 18, who isn't old enough yet to become a U.S. citizen, filling out the forms in Spanish to obtain his Mexican passport was an adventure. Yapez grew up in the United States and is bilingual, but some bureaucratic terms in Spanish tripped him up, he said.
The form asks the applicant to choose a body size -- using formal Spanish words for robust, slight and other choices -- and Yapez said he hadn't heard some of the terms before. He wrote down the name of his birthplace in Michoacan state, Mexico, smiling wryly. He pointed at it: Santiago- tangamandapio.
"It's a real tongue twister, isn't it?" he said with a chuckle.
(E-mail Susan Ferriss at sferriss(at)sacbee.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
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