The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Thursday that it was launching a campaign to promote double citizenship for Mexicans and people of Mexican descent living in the United States.

Speaking to a Mexican news outlet, Carlos González Gutiérrez, consul general of Mexico in Austin, said Mexico’s consular network would aggressively pursue the campaign.

The initiative is aimed at the approximately 3 million Mexicans who hold legal residency in the United States, whom González Gutiérrez said would improve their quality of life by becoming U.S. citizens.

“We will aggressively ask people to exercise their rights and the possibilities they acquire by becoming U.S. citizens,” he said. “Since 1998, you no longer lose Mexican citizenship when you become the citizen of another country.”

Double citizenship is also available to an estimated 20 million people who were born in the United States to Mexican parents, as an effort to bring those people closer to Mexico, he said.

“This carries very tangible benefits such as the ability to travel and work in Mexico without restrictions, access to Mexico’s public universities and the opportunity to buy property in Mexico,” he said.

González Gutiérrez is in Mexico City for the annual reunion of the country’s foreign consuls and ambassadors, which will run through Friday.