South Texas opposes wall on border with Mexico

La Prensa (Texas)

September 1, 2015

South Texas opposes wall on border with Mexico 

Though some mayors in the border region of the Rio Grande Valley have lined up with conservatives, none wants to hear anything about the wall that Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump wants to build - they prefer greater cooperation with Mexico instead.

When Trump made his appearance at the Mexican border a month ago, the mayor of Mission, Texas, was categorical: "Leave us alone," Beto Salinas said. "Go back to New York."

Salinas, mayor for the past 17 years of this border town of 80,000 inhabitants and who has a statue of himself at the doors of the town hall, extended a more kindly welcome last week to Florida's ex-Gov. Jeb Bush on his visit to McAllen.

"We need to protect our business partners to the south," Salinas said after meeting with the Republican candidate who has strong ties to Mexico. "We have a lot of people from Mexico investing in our area. This is why we have had a lot of success in Mission, being one of the fastest growing cities in the country...We need to keep our friends."

"At least Bush's plans are realistic," Jim Darling, independent mayor of the border town of McAllen, told EFE in an interview, adding that Republican politicians like photos taken of themselves patrolling the Rio Grande, while Democrats want to be seen visiting immigrant detention centers.

Trump's enthusiasm for building a border wall between the United States and Mexico to prevent illegal immigration found little support in the Rio Grande Valley, where most of the business activity is linked to Mexico.

One only has to cross the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge, one of six in this region and over which some 30,000 vehicles drive every day, and observe the companies in full production to realize that the Rio Grande Valley is unlikely to turn its back on Mexico if it wants to keep growing.

Cities on the border want to end illegal immigration by means of the economic development of the border corridor on both sides of the Rio Grande and with a policy of visas, not with walls that would suffocate what has been one of the poorest regions in the United States.

"You don't have to be all that smart to realize the tremendous potential of increased economic cooperation with Mexico," Darling said, giving as an example the "maquiladoras," outsourced assembly plants owned by U.S. companies making use of the cheap labor in Tamaulipas state.

The southeastern Texas border region, known locally as The Valley, has experienced an economic and demographic revolution in just a few years, thanks to free trade with Mexico plus immigration, which has allowed a severely poor area to grow at a faster rate than the national and state average.

According to a study taken by the Federal Reserve of Dallas, Mexicans spend some $4.5 billion annually on retail purchases on the Texas side of the border, something easily observed with a walk through La Plaza Mall, a shopping center where Spanish is spoken almost exclusively and in whose parking lot the license plates from Mexican states compete in number with those issued in Texas.

Data from the 2013 study show the direct correlation between the growing employment at Mexican "maquiladoras" and job creation on the U.S. side plus the boom in the region's services sector.

"We're on the front line when disagreements arise," said Darling - who supported the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott - in reference to the standoff in the U.S. Congress over passing comprehensive immigration reform and coordinating development and security policies with Mexico.

But aside from the waves of undocumented immigrants, which last year landed McAllen at the center of the debate, this city has no interest in seeing a spread of the instability that has made neighboring Tamaulipas the most dangerous state in Mexico, according to the U.S. State Department.

"When it's the cartels moving the money, it's easy to corrupt people, here in McAllen or in (the Texas capital of) Austin," Darling said, adding that crime remains low in this city despite the odd occasion when some drug trafficker gets gunned down.

"They come here looking for protection, for a place to hide, but when they run into one of their enemies, there's no holding them back," Darling said.

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