Changing Mindsets Urged for Border
Changing Mindsets Urged for Border
At COA’s conference in El Paso, Texas, experts in cross-border relations discussed the need to facilitate trade between the two countries.
EL PASO - Changing policymakers' perceptions of the U.S.-Mexico border — and the nearly half-trillion dollars in trade that crossed it last year — was a running theme Wednesday in a conference here featuring diplomatic, business and political leaders from both countries.
Ambassadors, congressmen and representatives from industries involved in cross-border trade repeated a decades-old refrain: policies set in the two nations' capitals don't do enough to facilitate the trade between the U.S. and its southern neighbor.
“Mexico City and Washington are too far away from the border,” said Javier Treviño Cantú, a congressman from Monterrey in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, where the chassis used at San Antonio's Toyota plant are manufactured.
Speakers at the conference, held at the University of Texas at El Paso and sponsored by the New York-based Council of the Americas, pointed to historically low immigration from Mexico, that country's growing economy and unprecedented constitutional reforms being enacted as evidence that there's no need for restrictive policies on either side of the border.
But instead of spending money on improving infrastructure or increasing personnel at ports of entry, members of Congress are talking about doubling the Border Patrol for the second time in a decade, said U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso.
“I don't know that my colleagues in Congress really care about what happens here in El Paso and in Juarez,” O'Rourke said. “They care what happens in their home district....”
