Mexican consul fired over passport scheme

Earlier today, we mentioned how the Mexican government shook-up the country’s customs agency in order to root out corruption. A snafu at one of Mexico’s consulate in the U.S. has some observers calling for a diplomatic shake-up, too.

Enrique Hubbard- the Mexican consul general in North Texas- will be removed from his post after an internal probe revealed financial irregularities at the Dallas consulate. Authorities alleged that consulate staff skimmed personal profits off of passport fees for about seven years. Hubbard has not been directly implicated in the passport scheme though one Mexican official claimed that "he proved to be too tolerant."

The wrongdoings in Dallas (along with the infamy of Mexican corruption) have led some Mexicans to call on investigating all the country’s consulates in the U.S.

"We have had a problem of years and years and years," said Jorge Navarrete, a legal immigrant from the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

Navarrete said Mexican consulates around the U.S. should be investigated for potential scams involving the skimming of feeds for documents such as Mexican passports and identification cards.

Alfredo Castañeda, a naturalized U.S. citizen, called for the Mexican government to provide more transparency in its public accounting of funding to all consulates.

"Public officials, public accounts," said Castañeda, who is from northern Mexico.
"This investigation shouldn't be just for North Texas, but should be much greater and in all the consulates," he said.

Image- MSNBC (2007 image of “Mexican citizens with freshly taken passport photos walk toward a line to enter the Consul General of Mexico in San Francisco.”)
Online Sources- Dallas Morning News, MSNBC, The Latin Americanist, UPI, Houston Chronicle