Visit from the Mexican Consulate

March 6, Mukwonago's Global Certificate students were fortunate to listen to a speaker from the Mexican Consulate located in Milwaukee. Head Consul Julién Adem visited with students for one hour after school to discuss the role of a consulate in the Milwaukee area as well as discuss immigration and trade issues between the United States and Mexico. Some of the takeaways from the presentation were:

- An embassy really serves as building and helping the political relationship between countries, while Consulates really serve the people in the area.

- The work the Consulate is involved in is really serving Mexican Nationals living in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They will go out to meet Mexican Nationals throughout the state to help with registration of necessary paperwork to continue living and working in a foreign country (United States).

- The Mexican Consulate in Milwaukee opened up in 2016 and is the only Consulate in Wisconsin. It was opened to help serve the 200,000+ Mexican Nationals living in Wisconsin. Likewise the United States has 15 consulates in Mexico to help serve the 1 million U.S. citizens living in Mexico.

- The Consulate also works to build relationships with businesses to connect Wisconsin based businesses with Mexico and Mexican businesses with Wisconsin.

- Mexico's immigration policy is really an "open arms policy." Net migration from Mexico to the United States is near zero because of the equal number of Mexican nationals returning home to balance the number of Mexican nationals travelling to the United States. Mexico is interested in working with the United States in regards to international migration but because they are not a police state they will not prevent the movement of people from other Central American countries (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, etc) from travelling through Mexico to reach another destination like the United States.

Consul Adem also stressed the commonalities between our two countries including the structure of a Federal government and a Constitution based on the United States Constitution. However, while the United States Constitution has only 27 amendments and in the United States there are strong feelings toward keeping the government based on the original Constitution with few changes (hence only 27 amendments), many Mexicans view their constitution as needing to constantly change allowing hundreds of amendments including a recent amendment requiring political parties to offer at least 50% of candidates for election to be women.

In final, Consul Adem for our students to remember that Mexico and the United States have a lot in common and a strong political as well as economic relationship and that we have a friend in the south.