AP) A pizza chain has been hit with death threats and hate mail after offering to accept Mexican pesos, becoming another flashpoint in the nation's debate over immigrants.

“This is the United States of America, not the United States of Mexico,” one e-mail read. “Quit catering to the damn illegal Mexicans,” demanded another.

Dallas-based Pizza Patron said it was not trying to inject itself into a larger political debate about illegal immigration when it posted signs this week saying “Aceptamos pesos” — or “We accept pesos” — at its 59 stores across Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Pizza Patron spokesman Andy Gamm said the company was just trying to sell more pizza to its customers, 60 percent of whom are Hispanic.

Wal-Mart, H-E-B supermarkets and other American businesses in towns along the Mexican boarder accept pesos. And some busineses in New York and Minnesota communities along the northern boarder accept Canadian dollars.

The difference here is that many of the pizza joints are far from the boarder, in places like Dallas, more than 400 miles away, and Denver, more than 700 miles.

“If people would understand that the majority of our customers are Hispanic, then it might make more sense for a company to sell pizza for pesos,” Gamm said. “It doesn't make sense in Connecticut. And it doesn't make sense in North Dakota or in Maine. But it makes perfect sense here in Dallas, in Phoenix, in Denver — areas far from the boarder that have significant Hispanic populations.”

The company said it has received hundreds of e-mails, some supportive, most critical.

While praising the pesos plan as an innovative way to appeal to Hispanics, a partner in the nation's largest Hispanic public relations firm said a backlash was inevitable.

“Right now there's a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric going around that could make them a lightning rod,” said Patricia Perez, a partner at Valencia, Perez & Echeveste in Los Angeles.

Pizza Patron proclaims on its Web site that “to serve the Hispanic community is our passion.” Its restaurants are in mostly Hispanic neighborhoods, and each manager must be bilingual and live nearby, said Pizza Patron founder Antonio Swad, who is part-Italian, part-Lebanese.

The take-home menus are in both English and Spanish, and the dishes include the La Mexicana pizza, with spicy chorizo sausage; La Barbacoa pizza, topped with spicy pulled pork; and chicken wings flavored with lime, peppers and garlic con queso.

Many Pizza Patron customers have pesos “sitting in their sock drawers or in their wallets,” Gamm said. “We're talking small amounts, where it would be inconvenient to stop and exchange on the way back — maybe 10 or 20 dollars' worth of pesos.”

The promotion will run through the end of February and then be re-evaluated, Swad said.

In the first week, payments in pesos have accounted for about 10 percent of business at the five restaurants operated by the corporation, Pizza Patron said. The others are franchised, and the company will not get reports until the end of the week.

The company has set a conversion rate of 12 pesos per dollar, which is slightly higher than the official rate of about 11 pesos per dollar. Any change is given in U.S. currency.

At a Pizza Patron in Dallas, Veronica Vargas bought a pizza Wednesday for her son Nathan's fourth birthday. She paid with pesos her father brought home two weeks ago after a trip to see family in Mexico.

She said she is an occasional Pizza Patron customer, but came that day because she could pay with pesos. Her father wasn't going to use them because he had no plans to go back to Mexico anytime soon.

“I would mostly think a restaurant would do this in a boarder town,” she said. “But it got me over here.”
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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now they are getting death threats, now thts over the top, this is crazy... I can see your point bread, a point I didnt think of,a nd that both of you pointed out....

I just think it would make things really complicated when they went to pay for the cash drawer ... and the cashier ... especially when it got busy ... and ...

if one industry starts doing it ... then others will also ... making it even easier for the illegals to come and stay ...

as someone else said ... just my two cents worth ...

Once again we must look at the big picture to understand why people are upset ....

Foreign currency has been the norm in this country for years ...Thats not the problem ....

Making life easier for people that are breaking our laws is the problem ....  Some people are equating accepting Pecos to assisting illegal aliens.

Here ... here ...   I total agree ......    the problem with todays America is people are willing to bitch .....  but they are not willing to loose one dime for their cause ......

At least back in the sixties, people stood up for what they believed in,   put the country before their own needs.    But you see,  our government could not have that, so they come up with things like the Reco laws to prevent people from gathering a group to stand up for their rights.   So know people just bitch in private where  no harm can befall them.

Until someone stops the influx of cheap labor across our boarders,   the pay rate for picking Tatars will never rise.   One side will claim that Americans are to lazy to pick them and the other will claim we need public assistance because we have no jobs.     The politicians clean up selling hope to both sides. No one  really wants this to end.   Too many people are benefiting from it to give a rats ass what it does to our country.

Sideshow wrote:

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i like the "put the country before their own needs" part. like all the awesome weed, timothy leary trips, and free love that culminated in asses pressed against vw windows from coast to coast.

god i wished i grew up in the sixties. :)

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Ditto.....

Oh, I.O...I did not take anything you wrote as an attack. Forgive me if I responded as such. 

I just get a bit heated about the whole illegal alien issue....in many ways. I dont condone it by any means. My grandparents were all immigrants from Mexico. My maternal g-p's came over here legally....G.P became a citizen, G.M renewed her visa and all that good stuff. Had 10 American citizens, raised them in a bilingual home, sent them to private school, 2 boys off to fight for a country that hated their parents because Spanish was their first language, but my grandparents were honored to have sons in the U.S military. They had no hand-outs.....no welfare..just honest, hard-working people who came here because it was better for them. My paternal grandparents owned ranches in the States and in Mexico, but called Mexico home. My father was the only one out of 6 with dual citizenship. They, too, worked hard and never accepted hand-outs.

It burns my butt when people  complain about all the "damn Mexicans taking our jobs" Please.....have you seen the shit they do for crap pay........dont punish the people trying to improve their lives..punish the people hiring them! Do you know what has to be done just to get an application filled out to even be looked at to become a citizen...do you know how much it costs? DO you know what those freaking asswipes who call themselves a Democratic governemnt in Mexico do to these poor people...these uneducated Indios..gente de la calle? Have you ever seen a 4 year old in bare feet out in the streets at 2:30 a.m selling Chiclets to drunk college students because his daddy only was paid 50 cents for a days work? That is Mexico. If you dont look like me, my parents or cousins and have at least a high school education, you are shit....Indio de la calle forced to work for El Hombre. Why wouldnt they want to come over here? Vcente Foxdidnt want them, the new guy doesnt either and that is why they are not trying to figure out a way to keep them over there......too much of a hassle...not good emnough for their country...

Adios   

KatScratch wrote:

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The point is this is America where ENGLISh is the spoken language, where US dollars are common tender. If you want to live here and be an American citizen then be one! Don't just come here and then be a Mexican on American soil!!!???? I could care less if they come here to better themselves and get a job, welcome to America where people should work for a living, but dam....learn the language and be American! If you want to exchange your money, go have it done. This is America with US dollars, not freakin pesos. Convenient....good grief! Welcome to the land of lazy ass americans too lazy to exchange back the foreign currancey they have left over......

Shit, I'm too lazy to count, roll and cart all those annoying pennies I've accumulated over the years....can some butt-whipe come to my house and do it for me when he delivers my pizza? 

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So you are saying my parents are lazy because they have pesos from trips to Mexico that they have not exchanged? Thats what you are saying?

It's a freaking way to make money..they would take yen if we were close to Japan or had a large Japanese American population or a large amount of engineers who had yen in their possession. We have a butt load amount of yen and Sing dollars and we arent lazy...we just have not changed them over ...... its called human nature.

KatScratch wrote:

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It's call procastination!!!!! If it were so dam important for you to have the money, you would have exchanged it already? But now that you don't have to be "inconvenienced" by exchanging it......let's just keep on lowering the standards for America....WTF? Should we change the name too??? Mexamerican? Let's make spanish a mandatory class for all American children too while we are at it!......Ugh....

If I were going to move to Mexico, I would learn the fucking language for pete's sake!

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Actually, I,mostly, speak English when I go to Mexico....no need to practice my Spanish because I dont need to. You would not need to learn much Spanish because all the people you would associate with learned English before they went to college. Some before. That is the norm for the economic class you would fit in. Many Mexicans would ask you to please stop butchering Spanish and speak in the language you are comfortable with..also gives them a chance to practice. I have to beg my cousins, aunts and uncles to speak Spanish to me when I see them, but they always want to practice speaking English. Sucks, huh?

The pizza place is marketing this peso thing to make money. Believe me, it wont last. I read the same article in the paper over here. Its is amusing that the catering to Hispanics thing is their reason...hellllloooo...I am Hispanic and dont have pesos to spend....certainly not enough to buy a pizza. I was bothered by that whole "we are a business in a Hispanic comunity"...what......Hispanics dont have US dollars......I grew up in a town 5 minutes from Mexico and even my friends who crossed the boarder every day to go to school with me had US cash.  Again...they are trying to make a buck..arent we all?

No me chinges , Gata Guerda!