Mexican Professionals and Businesses Flee Mexican Drug Wars for United States

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Mexican Professionals and Businesses Flee Mexican Drug Wars

Mexican professionals and business owners fleeing Cuidad Juarez, Mexico for El Paso, Texas, USA

Mexican violence is responsible for mass exodus of Mexican professionals and business owners

MEXICO CITY (By Chris Hawley, Arizona Republic) June 16, 2008 ― In February, Salvador Urbina decided he was tired of the shootouts, the kidnappings and the military patrols in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez.

So he put his house up for sale, packed up his car and moved his wife and children to El Paso, Texas, joining a growing stream of professionals who are relocating to the United States to get away from Mexico's drug wars.

"I didn't want to leave," said Urbina, a lawyer. "But there's a very deep psychosis developing in Juárez. Criminals are taking advantage of the situation there. Every day I worried about the safety of my wife and family."

In U.S. cities along the border, middle-class Mexicans are buying homes, renting apartments and even moving their businesses across the border, say real-estate agents, chambers of commerce and city officials.

Arizona cities have been an exception, because neighboring Sonora state has been mostly quiet compared with other parts of the border, said Marco Antonio Garcia, director of economic development for Nogales, Sonora. But in hotspots like Tijuana, Juárez and Nuevo Laredo, business officials say the emigration is picking up.

Falling housing prices in the United States are part of the draw, said Mireya Durazo, a real-estate agent in San Diego, across the border from Tijuana. But the main driver is a wave of violence unleashed by Mexico's 18-month-old crackdown on drug cartels, she said.

"First it was the dentists, then lawyers and doctors . . . now it's teachers, owners of little stores, people from the working class," Durazo said.

Drug gangs are increasingly bringing civilians into the fray as they battle soldiers and each other for control of plazas, or drug-smuggling corridors.

In all, some 4,000 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón began sending troops to attack the cartels in December 2006, according to a tally by the Reforma newspaper. Polls released recently by Reforma and the El Universal newspaper show most Mexicans believe the government is losing the battle.

In Tijuana, about 300 physicians rallied on May 21 to protest a string of kidnappings and threats against doctors for treating police and rival smugglers. In all, the city of 1.3 million has seen 118 kidnappings this year, according to Hope Against Forced Disappearances and Impunity in Tijuana, a civic group.

In Ciudad Juárez, a video appeared on YouTube.com on May 27 claiming responsibility for the killing of a nightclub owner and the torching of two bars. The video was signed by "La Línea," a band of enforcers for drug trafficker Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, and it warned businessmen in Juárez that they would soon be contacted for protection money.

Real-estate companies have seized upon such incidents to market homes on the U.S. side of the line.

"Are you looking for a safer place to live?" says the Web site of Latin Credit, a real-estate company in San Diego that caters to Mexican residents. "Live in tranquility!" says an ad for El Paso homes in the Diario de la Frontera newspaper of Ciudad Juárez, which is just across the border from El Paso.

Leaving home

Urbina, a 45-year-old lawyer, occasionally teaches courses at the police academy in Juárez. After Calderón flooded Juárez with troops, Urbina and other lawyers got death threats.

Earlier this year, drug traffickers launched a wave of police killings in Juárez. When some of his former police- academy students started showing up dead, Urbina knew it was time to go. Urbina now commutes to work in Ciudad Juárez every morning and returns to El Paso every night. He spends 20 hours a week stuck in traffic waiting to cross the Rio Grande.

"It's terrible, with the gasoline (prices) and the air pollution," he said. "But a lot of people are doing it now. I think the problem of insecurity is the worst it has been."

Oscar Orozco, a partner in an accounting firm in Juárez, said four of the firm's nine partners now live on the Texas side.

The crisis in the U.S. housing market has made homes more affordable for these upper-middle-class Mexicans, said Clara Jaramillo, president of Latin Credit. Her company has sold about 50 homes in the past year to Mexicans leaving Tijuana.

In recent months, the number of Mexicans calling the company has tripled, she said.

Setting up shop

To avoid the cross-border commute, some Mexicans are trying to bring their businesses with them, said Steve Ahlenius, president of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce in south Texas.

About 70 percent of the people approaching the chamber for help in setting up a business are Mexican nationals, compared with about 30 percent two years ago, he said. McAllen lies across the border from Reynosa, Mexico.

Francisco Monroy, owner of a wholesale company that sells blankets and sheets in Tijuana, said he plans to open a warehouse in San Diego so he can get an investor visa.

Monroy moved across the border in September after being kidnapped for ransom. He said his family paid "a fortune" for his release.

"It totally changes your life," he said. "I said to my family, 'Let's get out of here, because here there's no security, no support from the authorities of any kind.' "

Monroy is in the United States on a tourist visa and is running his company by telephone. An investor visa, which is given to people who open businesses and employ people in the U.S., would allow him to live in San Diego indefinitely.

The number of investor visas, known as E-1 or E-2 visas, issued to Mexicans grew 42 percent from 2005 to 2007, from 1,321 to 1,874.

The violence has also discouraged some Americans from crossing the border to eat or shop in Mexico, Ahlenius said. In response, some Mexican restaurateurs and shop owners are opening U.S. branches to recapture their clientele.

Jesús Martínez, owner of the El Pastor restaurant in Reynosa, said his U.S. customers had declined by 70 percent. He is opening a branch of the same name in McAllen.

The Los Arcos restaurant in Tijuana is doing the same in San Diego, said promotion manager Hugo Vidaurrázaga.

In Laredo, Pavel Hernández said he decided to open his new restaurant, El Real de México, on the U.S. side because he wanted more stability.

"I've seen how businesses, businessmen and their families end up bankrupt from being kidnapped or robbed, and many of them end up emigrating," Hernández said.

"It's sad that investors are investing here and not in Mexico," he said. "My dream was to open a restaurant in Mexico. But I've abandoned that dream because, well, you see how things are."