The Border in Context

The nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border extends from the Pacific Ocean on the west to the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Four U.S. states (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) and six Mexican states (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas) comprise the border region. Well over 92% of the border region’s more than 12 million population8 lives in 14 sister cities that straddle the border. Among these, the San Diego- Tijuana metropolis accounts for nearly 40% of the overall population of the border, with over 4.5 million people. The next largest sister city pair is El Paso/Ciudad Juarez.

The border, an imaginary line in the sand for most of its length, is a region of stark contrasts, where cultures, languages, and national security interests collide with issues of poverty, migration, environment, education, and health. These issues produce vast differences in standards of living and social and political rights.

Relative to the rest of Mexico, except for the capital and surrounding municipalities, and a few other states, the northern border is now among the most affluent regions in the country. In fact, Mexico’s 14 contiguous cities along the border - representing nearly 80 percent of the country’s border area population - are among the most developed municipalities in the country based on the United Nations Human Development Index, which combines indices for gross domestic product (GDP), per capita income, health, and education. Additionally, the development of the maquiladora industry in the larger border communities - such as Tijuana, Mexicali, and Ciudad Juarez - has greatly increased employment.

This relative affluence, however, is masked by the growing gap between the well-to-do and those living on the edge or in absolute poverty. This is due, in part, to the border region’s high cost of living relative to other parts of Mexico. In fact, the border communities of Tijuana, Cd. Juarez, Reynosa, and Matamoros are among the most costly places to live in the country. Another factor is the on-going impact that migration has on the border region coupled with state and local government’s inability to keep pace with the public infrastructure needs of these new residents.

In the case of Tijuana, over 50% of the new in-migrant population ends up in squatter settlements without basic utilities such as potable water, sewage treatment, telecommunications, or electrical hook-ups. Collectively, the problems of migration and uneven economic expansion present a unique set of challenges for municipal and state officials across Mexico’s northern border in providing a whole host of basic infrastructure and human services (health, education) without a supporting tax basis to meet these growing unmet needs. The dilemma of Mexican border states is further compounded by the fact that budgetary reapportionments are directly tied to census statistics with a five-year lag. As such, Mexican border states lag behind the rest of the country in terms of Mexican Federal budgetary allocations on a per capita income basis.[1] In the case of Baja California, there is an un-funded mandate that is unable to fully meet the needs of over 450,000 people according to the state officials.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, for many migrants who move to border communities such as Tijuana, Mexicali, Nogales, and Juarez, the cycle of poverty from southern Mexico to the border is perpetuated. According to a recently published study entitled "Quality of Life Declines in Big and Growing Cities" by Brockerhoff and Brennan, the increase of infectious disease and infant mortality is directly correlated to the crowding index in urban cities of the developing world. As a case in point, Tijuana has the second highest incidence of infant/child mortality along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Linking Maquiladoras to Border Socio-Economic Challenges and Needs:

While there is no doubt that the maquiladora industry has spurred job growth throughout the border region, it can also be said that the rapid development of this sector has brought uneven economic expansion and unhealthy population growth for the border with increasing numbers of unskilled and poorly educated migrants coming to the region. The reasons for this are twofold. First, Mexico’s economic crisis and peso devaluation of 1994 (following the passage of NAFTA) led to a decline in real wage rates and contributed to increased unemployment throughout the country. This resulted in a marked increase in foreign investment for maquiladora assembly operations in the border region. Consequently, large numbers of migrants came to the border from poorer regions of Mexico. Today, with more than a million workers in 2210 maquiladora factories[2] , the border is a region where the movements of the poor are shaking the pillars of the free trade economy.

As Graph 1 illustrates[3], between 1970 and 2000, both sides of the border experienced rapid population growth. The majority of these gains occurred on the Mexican side between 1990 and 2000. Over the course of this decade, the region experienced an annual population increase of 2.4%, totaling more than a 26% growth in population.

The investment in border area maquiladoras in the period following NAFTA was unprecedented. During the first five years after the enactment of NAFTA (1994-1998), maquiladora employment grew by 86% compared to 47% in the five years prior to NAFTA, as illustrated in Table 2.[4] In June, 2005, over 1,170 million workers were employed in the maquiladora sector, with the majority of these jobs concentrated along Mexico’s northern border.

While NAFTA did contribute to increased foreign investment,[5] the reasons for the expansion of the maquiladora industry during the 1990’s had less to do with NAFTA per se, and more to do with the Mexican economic crisis and peso devaluation and the resulting impacts of globalization. For these same reasons, Mexican federal, state, and local governments were ill prepared to make the necessary public investments in basic infrastructure to accommodate the resulting urban and industrial growth. Post NAFTA migration of largely unskilled, poorly educated workers to Mexico’s northern border region coupled with the lack of investment in public infrastructure and social services has led to a marked increase over of the last twelve years in the number of unregulated slum dwellings. These slum communities lack basic municipal services including access to potable water, electricity, sewage, and, in many cases, easy access to schools. As such, amidst rising per capita incomes for Mexico’s northern border, the incidence of poverty is increasing with a growing number of the region’s working poor now living in un-zoned, unregulated shanty-towns or “colonias populares” with trans-boundary environmental and health problems impacting the bi-national border region as a whole.

[1] Programa Económico 2003, Proyecto de Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación (Ramo 33), Secretaria de Hacienda and Crédito Publico.
[2] Source: Secretaría de Economía de México. www.economia.gob.mx
[3] Source: Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática; United States; US Census Bureau, 2000
[4] Gruben, William C., “Did NAFTA Really Cause Mexico’s High Maquiladora Growth?” Working Paper, CLAE0301, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Center for Latin American Economics, Working Paper CLAE0301, page 3. July 2001
[5] Source: INEGI. Estadística de la Industria Maquiladora de Exportación.