Mexico bars dual nationals from the presidency and the governorships

President Claudia Sheinbaum signed a constitutional decree on Wednesday that bars people with dual nationality from running for president, for state governor, or for head of government of Mexico City. She said at her morning press conference in the National Palace that no president or governor may hold dual nationality. The decree had already passed the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies and had been ratified by the required number of state legislatures. It was due to be published in the Official Gazette of the Federation on Wednesday. It takes effect on publication. The new rules apply from the 2028 electoral process, not to any race already under way.

The reform amends articles 82, 116 and 122. A candidate for those offices must be a Mexican citizen by birth, in full exercise of rights, the child of a Mexican father or mother, and must have lived in the country for at least twenty years. The new sentence is the nationality bar. A person who holds another nationality must renounce it before asking to be registered as a candidate. Once in office, the holder may not acquire or request another nationality, and may not invoke a nationality other than the Mexican one before a foreign authority.

Passport, vote, diplomatic protection

The prohibition is written in operational terms, not only as a status. It covers use of a passport or identity document issued by a foreign state, the exercise of political rights that come with foreign citizenship, and recourse to that state's diplomatic protection. A breach is to be punished under Title Four of the constitution, the chapter on the responsibility of public servants. The presidency's August note, when the initiative was sent to Congress, used the same list. Wednesday's signature turns that note into a decree.

Luisa Maria Alcalde, the president's legal counsel, said the measure is meant to prevent foreign interference. Sheinbaum put the same idea in the language of interest. At the morning conference she said a person who wants to be president, or the executive of a state, should renounce any other citizenship at the moment of registration and keep only Mexican nationality, so that the interest of the nation sits above the interest of any other state. The August text had already proposed that the office-holder could neither acquire nor request another nationality.

Who is affected, and when

The rule does not strip dual nationality from ordinary citizens. It attaches to three jobs: the presidency, the governorships, and the Mexico City executive. A dual national who has no plan to seek those offices is outside the decree. A dual national who wants one of them in 2028 must renounce the other nationality before the electoral authority will register the candidacy. The renunciation has to be real enough to satisfy the registration check. The decree does not publish a list of current office-holders who hold a second passport. It sets the test for the next cycle.

The delay to 2028 is the political fact under the ceremony. Sheinbaum's own term is not cut short by a rule she signed. Governors chosen before 2028 finish their terms under the old text. The first campaign in which a rival can be kept off the ballot for a second nationality is the one that opens with the 2028 process. That is also the horizon on which her party, and the opposition, will start sorting possible successors.

What the Gazette will be used for

Once the decree is in the Official Gazette, the test is administrative. Electoral authorities will have to decide what documents prove a renunciation, and what to do if a foreign state is slow to record one. Title Four supplies a sanction after the fact. It does not tell a returning officer how to read a foreign certificate on registration day. That gap is where the first disputes will sit, in 2028, not in Wednesday's photograph at the National Palace.

The sentence Sheinbaum read is short. No president or governor may hold dual nationality. The articles under it are longer, and they are the part a candidate will have to satisfy: renounce before registration, do not use the foreign passport, do not call on the other state's protection, and do not pick the other nationality up again while in the job.