Mexicans who live in the United States face open hostility on many fronts, particularly in California. Rubbing salt into these wounds, their own government has started to attack them in the most virulent way for reasons they may have to do with the fact that they now number in the millions and are seeking the right to vote. PNS commentator Jesus Martinez is an immigrant researcher and activist who was formerly a member of the Political Science Department at Santa Clara University.

MEXICO CITY -- Here is a quick quiz for anyone interested in immigrant rights.

Who is:

• launching a brutal and expensive media campaign to deny the millions of Mexicans who immigrate to the United States the most fundamental civil rights;

• calling immigrants as a group a threat to national sovereignty and defining them as criminals -- tax evaders undermining the fiscal health of the public sector; and

•  refusing to take into account migrant opinions or the possibility of productive dialogue?

No, it is not the infamous Pete Wilson, former California governor, leading proponent of the divisive Proposition 187, and failed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

No, it is not the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) or any other nativist or xenophobic organization.

You can also rule out every politician promoting exclusionary migration policies in Washington or any state capital.

Give up?

It is the Mexican government.

Watch any prime time television program in Mexico and, within a few minutes you will see a government-paid commercial portraying immigrants in the most negative terms since Pete Wilson's incendiary "They keep coming" spots.

In daily newscasts, the two leading national television networks endorse and reinforce the government's line with shamefully biased "reports".

The issue at stake is automobiles. Hundreds of thousands of migrants who return to their home country seek to import their vehicles. Under current laws, migrants can only bring them in for six months period and must then head back to the United States. To ensure that the return trip is actually made, the migrant posts a bond before the temporary importation permit is issued.

This old problem has grown in recent years with increasing migration and the government's inability to develop an adequate policy. The result is thousands of vehicles with "illegal" status under constant threat of confiscation by authorities -- many of them willing to look the other way for a considerable bribe.

Migrants, fed up with this situation, have initiated organizational efforts to defend their property. Dozens of organizations now promote the legalization of the vehicles, usually through negotiating with the government but increasingly by organizing mass protests at regional or national headquarters of the national tax revenue agency. The migrants claim they will pay all taxes and fees necessary to "regularize" their vehicles.

These efforts have attracted opportunistic professional lobbyists, who charge the car owners fees. On the other side of the fence is a federal government that has shown incredible consistency in being unresponsive to migrant needs, interests, and rights. Also actively involved are the nation's automobile dealers, an apparently formidable interest group, which claims the migrants' vehicles harm the national automobile industry (although all makes of automobile are foreign -- mostly U.S. -- owned) and that migrants avoid paying 2 billion pesos a year in taxes.

On April 12, a nationwide protest included activity in most states with a migrant tradition, thousands of individuals taking control of streets and other public spaces, including the Zocalo, Mexico City's principal plaza. In Celaya, an important regional office of the tax agency has been under the control of vehicle owners for the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, the federal government warns -- in TV commercials and full-page ads -- that foreign vehicles are used in numerous crimes, and asserts that all proponents of "regularization" are criminals.

All this is taking place just as the federal executive and legislators from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have attacked the right of migrants to vote in Mexico's presidential elections -- a right approved unanimously by the Congress in 1996. Taking their cue from U.S. anti-immigrant forces, these officials argue that granting suffrage rights to migrants will violate the nation's sovereignty.

President Zedillo has scheduled a May trip to the California cities with the largest migrant concentrations.

This leaves us wondering: is he expecting to be received with open arms by the same migrants his government is attacking so viciously, or is he going in order to sign up as a dues-paying member of FAIR?