Cartoon by Tom Stiglich

Why We Need Mexico 
Trump insists there’s a crisis at the border. But in McAllen, Texas, there’s an economic boom, fueled by close ties with Mexico

The Rolling Stone: People say the American mall is dying — but if so, someone forgot to tell La Plaza Mall.

La Plaza is the largest shopping center in McAllen, Texas, a mid-size city on the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s the sort of establishment you’d find in any city or suburb — Foot Locker, Bath & Body Works, Baby Gap — the kind of brick-and-mortar retail dinosaur that’s been hemorrhaging money for years. But not La Plaza. This mall recently underwent a $100 million expansion, and on a recent weekday — in the middle of the school year, in the middle of the week — its parking lot was full of cars. Most of them sported Mexican plates.

McAllen is the biggest city in Hidalgo County, the most populous border county in Texas, not far from where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico. Owing to its location as one of the most accessible U.S. ports of entry for migrants fleeing Central America — hundreds of miles closer than El Paso or San Diego — the city is at the epicenter of some of the most divisive issues of the Trump administration’s ongoing anti-immigration campaign: family separations, deportation trials, military deployments, the Wall. The Border Patrol’s Ursula detention center, which became infamous last summer for housing children in chain-link cages, is in McAllen. And the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, headquartered up the highway, is the busiest such sector in the country by far, making five times as many immigrant apprehensions as any other region — 63,000 families and 23,000 unaccompanied children last year alone.

It’s little wonder that when Trump flew to the border to drum up support for his $5.7 billion demand to fund the wall, he chose to stage his photo op in McAllen. “A wall works,” Trump said at a Border Patrol station, wearing a white MAGA hat.

Yet somewhat lost in all the sensational immigration news is the fact that McAllen is also a prime example of how American border cities reap great economic benefits from a strong relationship with Mexico. For most of the past century, McAllen was a relatively poor agricultural center, largely dependent on cotton fields and citrus groves. But since the introduction of NAFTA in 1994 — and the resulting boom in maquiladoras, or manufacturing plants, across the river in the city of Reynosa — the region’s economy has been one of the fastest-growing in America, thanks largely to retail and international trade. Trump often says Mexico is leeching off America. But to Americans here in the Rio Grande Valley, as to millions of Americans on the border, Mexico is a boon, not a drag.

The mall is just one example. Because of high import costs and comparably high sales tax, millions of Mexican shoppers cross the border (legally) to the U.S. every month, to buy everything from groceries to computers. All told, Mexican consumers pump an estimated $3 billion into the Valley’s economy each year. Coming to McAllen to shop is so common, in fact, that there’s even a Spanish word for it: macalenear, or literally “to do McAllen.” Mayor Jim Darling says the city is one of the top sales-tax collectors in the state of Texas per capita — and a whopping 40 percent of that money comes from Mexican citizens.

Matt Ruszczak, director of the Rio South Texas Economic Council, says annual household spending in the region outpaces annual income by about $20,000 — meaning hundreds of millions more dollars are being spent here than being earned. “And that’s not because we’re all running up our credit cards,” Ruszczak jokes. “It’s because of Mexico.”

The same is true in cities all along the border, from Texas to Arizona to California. As David Deanda, president of McAllen’s Lone Star National Bank, has said of Mexico, “We depend on them more than they depend on us.”

Yet this highly beneficial relationship is currently under existential threat. In December, one week into what is now the longest government shutdown in history, President Trump made an ominous vow: If “Obstructionist Democrats” didn’t agree to fund his border wall, he wrote on Twitter, “We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely.” He went on to add that because the U.S. “looses [sic] soooo much money on Trade with Mexico,” shutting down the border would, he thought, be a “profit making operation.”

But you don’t have to spend long at the border to see that the truth is exactly the opposite.

“WHEN DO WE beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us. . . . Now they’re beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me.”

That’s how then-candidate Trump kicked off his presidential campaign, in June 2015, in a speech at the foot of a Trump Tower escalator. Since then, Mexico has been his go-to political bogeyman, more so than Iran or even ISIS. “Mexico has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough,” he announced one week after taking office. “Our Southern Border is under siege,” he said last year. “Mexico, which has a massive crime problem, is doing little to help!” Trump’s antipathy toward our southern neighbor even predates his presidency. “They’re selling drugs all over the place and they’re killing people all over the place. We’re not doing anything about it,” he told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly back in 2011. Three years later, he tweeted, “When will the U.S. stop sending $’s to our enemies, i.e. Mexico” — thus characterizing as an “enemy” one of our largest trading partners and longest-standing friends.

Trump has two main problems with Mexico. The first, obviously, is immigration. This despite the fact that illegal immigration has been steeply declining for years, down from its peak some 20 years ago. In 2017, the Border Patrol, with more agents and resources than it’s had in its history, reported apprehending 303,000 undocumented immigrants — the fewest since 1971. What’s more, economists and business leaders agree that the skills gap in our workforce means even undocumented, low-skill immigrants are a net positive for the U.S. economy >>>