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On Friday, in Geneva, Mexico signaled alarm at the treatment of its large Mexican minority in the United States, comparing American actions to prevent the use of Spanish to attempts in Ukraine and Estonia to prevent the use of Russian.
While Mexico’s foreign policy has been generally benign toward the United States since hostilities in the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, the Latin-American country has been keeping a close eye on developing events in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
Russia has maintained that annexation of the Crimea peninsula is justified because it has the right to protect Russian speakers outside of Russia’s borders.
Mexican political leaders have taken note, perhaps sensing an opportunity to gain long-lost territory and increase the size of its economy by expanding northward into areas currently administered by the United States.
Mexico has begun enthusiastically supporting protections for linguistic minorities, a Mexico City diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council.
“Language must not be used to segregate and isolate groups,” the diplomat said, according to details provided to The Daily Caller by the U.N. Mexico has officially expressed concern about “steps taken in this regard by belligerent elements in the United States.”
As an example, the Mexico City envoy mentioned a Texas middle school principal’s attempt to ban the use of Spanish in classrooms. (RELATED: Principal fired for Spanish language ban, Hispanic activists seek FBI INVESTIGATION)
The Mexican diplomat then forthrightly compared the treatment of Mexicans in the United States to the treatment of Russian speakers in Ukraine.
Mexico, the diplomat said, has the right to protect Spanish speakers who have migrated without documentation to the United States in search of economic opportunity. He further noted that, unlike in Ukraine, these migrants very often remain full Mexican citizens.
The text of the Mexican remarks is strikingly similar to language recently used by Russian envoys to protest demands by Estonia that Estonia’s considerable Russian minority should learn to speak Estonian.
In response, a U.S. diplomat asserted that the government in Washington, D.C. has endorsed protection of the rights of Spanish-speaking minorities “to the utmost international standards.” The American remarked that some leaders in the ruling Democratic party have pushed for immigration reform which would grant citizenship to Spanish-speaking Mexicans who initially entered the United States illegally.
Both Ukraine and Estonia were members of the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union’s dissolution.
Similarly, Mexico held parts of Texas, New Mexico and California before losing the land to the United States as a result of the Mexican-American War.
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