"Mr. Mexico's Goodwill Crusade," by Ruben Navarrette, Jr. - the San Diego Union-Tribune (as carried by the San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Jan 2006)
IT WASN'T surprising that the Mexican government would hire an American public-relations firm to improve its image in the United States.
Nor was it surprising that Mexican President Vicente Fox tapped my friend, Dallas-based political consultant Rob Allyn, to be Mexico's goodwill ambassador. Allyn worked on Fox's 2000 presidential campaign, after which a Dallas magazine dubbed the consultant "Mr. Mexico."
What was surprising was that a business deal resulted in so many people becoming so unhinged.
Suddenly, the Republican strategist is being inundated with angry and insulting e-mails, calls and nasty comments posted on Web logs. Immigration restrictionists are threatening to picket Allyn's office and asking that "patriots" boycott his firm. One zealot wrote Allyn to demand that the consultant "register as a foreign alien agent" and calling him "disgusting and treasonous."
From those cable TV shows that bottom-feed off the immigration issue, I glean that Allyn is doing a "PR campaign for illegal immigrants" and generating public support for a guest-worker plan backed by the Mexican government.
Not quite, Allyn told me from his office in Dallas. "We've been hired to promote the image of Mexico," he said, "and specifically to let people know the facts about the real Mexico and where Mexico stands today."
Besides doing media interviews, Allyn plans to organize trade missions between the two countries, produce media material to show progress in Mexico, and conduct polling to gauge attitudes in the United States.
If Allyn wants to know what Americans think of Mexico and Mexicans -- and for that matter, Mexican Americans -- all he has to do is read my e-mail. But it's not pretty.
In the words of one reader: "Mexico has nothing that any red-blooded American would want. Mexico is a filthy, unlawful country which is trying with all its might to influence the U.S. to change its laws to benefit illegals." Another reader complained about "illegal Hispanics" with their "high crime rates, lack of education, large families living on the taxpayers' dole, failure to assimilate, flooding our emergency rooms and depressing wages for poor working citizens."
Allyn, who is to earn about $720,000 for his efforts, should have asked Fox for more money.
The way the consultant sees it, "perceptions lag reality" and Americans don't know as much about Mexico and Mexicans as they think they do.
I'll buy that. But it works both ways. Mexicans don't know as much about the United States as they think. That goes double for Mexican presidents.
When I suggested that Fox had done himself no favors by labeling as "shameful" U.S efforts to curb illegal immigration, Allyn declined to comment, but said he'd pass on my concerns to his client.
So let me add this: Most Americans don't like it when Mexico meddles in the internal affairs of the United States -- especially because Mexicans bristle when Americans meddle in the affairs of Mexico and especially because there wouldn't be so many illegal immigrants in this country if the Mexican government took more seriously its obligation to provide opportunities for its people rather than relying on the billions of dollars that immigrants send home in remittances.
For Allyn, there's a lot of positive news south of the border, including "that Mexico is a democracy today, with clean elections, that the Mexican government has made huge progress in cleaning up corruption and that there is economic stability."
There's also trade. According to Allyn, Americans export $111 billion in goods each year to Mexico.
"Mexico is America's second-largest trading partner (after Canada). That's more than Japan. More than Germany. More than China," he said.
"Mexico is a huge customer for us. We should treat it with respect."
Good luck with that, amigo. For many Americans, Mexico serves only one purpose and that's to provide something to which they can feel superior....
Also see:
"Fox Turns to Texas PR Firm to Shape Mexico's Image US," by Sam Enriquez (in Mexico City) - the Los Angeles Times, 22 Dec 2005
MEXICO CITY — President Vicente Fox has rehired the Texas PR man and political consultant who quietly helped engineer his election victory in 2000. This time, though, he wants Rob Allyn & Co. to put the brakes on what many Mexicans see as growing anti-immigration, anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill that would add 700 miles of border fencing and make illegal immigration a felony.
Fox denounced the measure as shameful. His foreign minister called it stupid and underhanded.
"How many of us don't have a relative in the United States, working and trying to make a living?" said Rodrigo Ivan Cortes Jimenez, an elected deputy in Mexico's lower house and a member of its commission on foreign affairs.
"It's about image, and they have a distorted image," he said of U.S. lawmakers. "The contributions of Mexicans in the United States, who are making their best effort, generating lots of wealth, are not known."...
[L]ast week [Fox] turned to the political operative who helped him topple Mexico's longtime ruling party to win the presidency.
Rob Allyn helped George W. Bush defeat Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas in 1994. Three years later, he saw another potential winner in Fox, then governor of Guanajuato state.
Allyn agreed to join Fox's fledgling presidential campaign, but only in secret.
For three years, Allyn worked clandestinely, helping craft Fox's message of change, as well as his TV commercials, his polling and his wardrobe. The publicist made dozens of trips to Mexico, traveling under three pseudonyms.
Fox, of the National Action Party, or PAN, came from behind to defeat Francisco Labastida of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled Mexico for seven decades.
During Mexico's official campaign season in the first six months of 2000, Allyn worked with Penn, Schoen & Berland, a polling and political consulting firm. They operated Democracy Watch, a nonpartisan group hired by Mexicans to conduct national exit polls as a hedge against election fraud.
Their secret role in the Fox campaign was revealed a week after the July 2 election by the Dallas Morning News. Allyn told the newspaper he hid his work for Fox because he didn't want to be a political liability. Mexicans are sensitive to foreign interference, especially involving the United States.
"Basically, for three years I'd go home from my real job to a secret job," he told the paper. "I led a second life for that period."
Allyn, who also worked on Bush's presidential campaigns, now faces a bigger challenge with the migration issue.
Demands for stemming illegal immigration are growing louder in the United States as Mexican and Central American workers spread across the country. Debate in states such as Minnesota, South Carolina and Virginia echoes arguments heard in California before voters in 1994 passed Proposition 187, which barred illegal immigrants from most public services, including schooling. That law was overturned by a federal court.
"Our focus is on public opinion, which influences policy outcomes in Congress," said Allyn, 46, who grew up in Huntington Beach and moved to Texas when he was in high school. "There is a huge misperception among the U.S. public about Mexico."
Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said Allyn's message should be that Mexicans have sunk deep roots in their U.S. neighborhoods and that they contribute more to society through their work, taxes and families than they take away in public services.
Allyn, whose firm is now owned by Fleishman-Hillard, said he'd like to talk about the two countries' trade ties and the importance of Mexican labor to the U.S. economy. He'd also like to survey Americans' attitudes on Mexico and Mexicans.
"We're not going to be their Washington lobbyists," he said, "but I want to be honest about the point of influencing public opinion to help change attitudes about Mexico, about immigration, about border security."
Fox's former foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, said such a task would require more than a public relations firm.
"Allyn is perfectly competent," Castañeda said. The two men worked together during the Fox campaign. "But the Mexican government has to use the embassy, the 45 consulates, and they all need to be speaking with the media, debating these issues and taking the case to the American people."
"Fox Takes Wrong Turn with Anti-Fence Drive" (editorial) - the San Antonio Express-News, 28 Dec 2005
If fences make for bad neighbors, the transgression is multiplied when the barrier stretches across 700 miles and covers parts of four states.
That sentiment is fueling an ad campaign recently announced by Mexican President Vicente Fox.
The Mexican government, enraged by a U.S. proposal to keep out illegal immigrants by building a wall along the border, will oppose the plan with a public relations blitz in the United States, the Associated Press reported.
He said the government has hired Rob Allyn & Co., a Dallas-based public relations firm, to help stem the growing resentment against undocumented workers in this country....
It is easy to understand the rage and frustration of Mexican officials.
Immigrants desperate enough to risk brutal hardships, including death, to cross the border will not be deterred by a wall; if their progress is blocked in one area, they will merely move to another. There are not enough bricks and mortar to keep them from coming.
If the U.S. measure seems ill-conceived, however, so does the Mexican response to it. As part of its advertising campaign, Mexican officials want to improve the image of their country.
This is not the way to go about it.
Mexican officials can tackle the problem more effectively. They can take the money they are investing in the ad campaign and use it to alleviate the economic conditions that drive immigrants across the border.
That is a problem that public relations cannot solve.
Tell me this: if Mexico is such a progressive, advanced, marvelous country, why are millions of its citizens voting with their feet to leave it? And why does it need a PR firm?
Moreover, what can be the ultimate goal of a PR campaign except to promote open borders so that even more of Mexico's proud residents can help themselves to what the United States has created?
Posted by: Rick Darby | 09 January 2006 at 02:09 PM