Migrants began their annual trek from Mexico City to New York, seeking the right to cast absentee ballots in Mexican elections.

MEXICO CITY - (AP) -- Mexican migrants launched a two-month relay Sunday from Mexico's capital to New York City, calling on Mexican lawmakers to grant them the right to cast absentee ballots for Mexico's 2006 presidential election and organizing undocumented workers along the way.

The binational relay is in its third year, following a 3,800-mile route that travels through northeast Mexico, then the southern and eastern United States, with runners carrying a torch to New York City in honor of Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

About 5,000 runners will carry the torch, sometimes passing through farm towns with only a few people along the route, and other times -- such as when the torch passes through Atlanta, which has a rapidly growing migrant population -- with thousands cheering them on.

The group is scheduled to arrive at New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral on Dec. 12, when Mexicans commemorate the day in 1531 when, according to legend, the virgin appeared to a poor Indian, Juan Diego, and left her image imprinted on his cloak.

PILGRIMAGES

Mexican migrants living in New York always celebrated Dec. 12 at St. Patrick's, leading pilgrimages from their neighborhoods but wishing they could travel to Mexico City's Basilica, as many Mexican pilgrims do.

In 2001, at the urging of the Roman Catholic Church, they decided to try it, planning a trip that would take them from the Basilica to St. Patrick's. Each year, the march has grown, kicking off with the group celebrating a Mass in Mexico City and ending up in New York.

The march route is expected to cross the U.S.-Mexican border at Brownsville, Texas, on Nov. 7, then make its way across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Joel Magallan, executive director of New York's Tepeyac Association, which organizes the relay, said the event has grown into a march for all migrants' rights -- not just Mexicans living in New York.

Organizers discovered migrants in small towns who wanted to know what they could do to protect themselves from abuse.

Now, the group travels all over the southern and eastern United States, organizing people as they go in a region where new migrant populations are booming.

Next year, they may change their route to reach more towns in the Midwest.

''The association's work is to get those who are invisible to most out into the streets,'' he said.

OTHER MIGRANTS

But the group hasn't stopped at the rights of migrants in the United States. This year, they called on the Mexican government to do more for Central Americans and other foreigners who travel through Mexico on their way to crossing illegally into the United States.

Congressman Francisco Saucedo, of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, said Mexico complains about abuses in the United States, but does little to help Central American and other migrants in Mexico.

''You can't just fight for better rights for yourself,'' he said.

He also acknowledged Mexican migrants' fight for the right to cast absentee ballots. Under current Mexican law, Mexicans must return home to vote.

Although there is a proposal in Congress that would grant Mexicans the right to vote while living abroad, it appears to have little chance at approval because of controversy over how to avoid fraud.