U.S.-Mexico Officials Back Border Plants

California Gov. George Deukmejian and border-state governors from the United States and Mexico agreed Friday to make industrialization along the border a higher priority than such long-standing problems as drug trafficking and immigration policy.

The decision to make industrial development their top priority was the outgrowth of a series of meetings that began here Thursday night with the convening of the sixth United States-Mexico Border Governors Conference.

Specifically, the governors agreed that the dramatic growth of the so-called maquiladora industry is the most important single development along the border in recent years and decided to aggressively promote future industrial expansion.

Maquiladoras are U.S. or foreign industrial plants built on the Mexican side of the border. Companies, attracted by inexpensive land and a ready supply of cheap labor, increasingly are using sites in Mexico to assemble car engines, televisions, computers and other products. Border towns on the U.S. side love the maquiladoras because they provide a magnet that attracts increased investment to their communities and creates more economic stability on the other side of the border.

Rapid Growth

But along with jobs and economic development created by the maquiladoras have come air and water pollution and other problems associated with rapid growth.

“If you asked the 10 governors here what the No. 1 topic was, it would have to be either the need for more economic growth or the need to deal with the bad consequences of it,” said New Mexico Gov. Garrey Carruthers, who hosted the two-day conference.

Joining Deukmejian and Carruthers in representing the U.S. side of the border were Govs. Evan Mecham of Arizona and William Clements of Texas. All four are Republicans.

Representing Mexico were the governors of the states of Sonora, Baja California, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas.

Also present were Jorge Espinosa de los Reyes, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, and Charles J. Pilliod, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

Absent from the meetings were U.S. critics of the maquiladora industry, most notably U.S. labor union representatives. The border industries have raised concern in the United States that the plants will take jobs away from U.S. workers and undermine the nation’s industrial base.

Congress is considering a special tariff to discourage production at maquiladora plants, but officials at the conference said they consider passage of such a tariff unlikely.

View Expressed

The view expressed here was that the United States will lose the plants anyway, so the choice really is whether the industrial facilities will be built in Mexico or on the other side of the Pacific in countries like Taiwan or South Korea.

Deukmejian, discounting the criticism, said studies have shown that “perhaps for every job that is created on the Mexican side of the border, two jobs are created on the United States side of the border” because of the increased economic activity in the area.

The governor, during a break in the meetings, said he is seriously considering opening a California trade office in Mexico City, similar to offices opened in Tokyo and London.

As for the maquiladora industry, participants at the conference here painted a mostly rosy picture.

Ray Sadler, director of the Border Institute at New Mexico State University where the conference was held, said, “These plants have created more jobs in Mexico in the last five years than any other sector of the Mexican economy.”