MEXICAN MERCHANTS: BORDER SECURITY HAS PRICE

Restrictions On Legal Crossings To Hurt U.S. Business, They Say

Matamoros, Mexico -- While the U.S. Congress works to limit the entry of
foreigners to prevent more terrorist attacks, people along the 2,100-mile
U.S.-Mexico border are telling a cautionary tale.

Merchants in the region near the Gulf of Mexico, and along the entire
border, are worried that the urgency to heighten security and restrict
visas could end up costing U.S. businesses billions in lost earnings.

Since border security was tightened after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
the flow of Mexican nationals legally crossing daily from Matamoros and
other border towns to shop, visit families and conduct business in the
United States has dropped by as much as 60 percent, Mexican officials say.

A permanent slowdown in the flow of humanity and goods over the border,
Mexican and U.S. business interests warn, could ripple through the rest of
the U.S. economy.

"What happens on the Texas border is going to affect a lot of other
people," said Frank Feild, president of the Chamber of Commerce of
Brownsville, the Texas city linked with Matamoros by four bridges over the
Rio Grande.

About $250 billion in goods are traded between Mexico and the United States
annually, much of it directly through the Texas border, where commercial
truck traffic jumped by 85 percent between 1995 and 1999.

In Texas, almost 100,000 pedestrians usually cross the border legally every
day.

Now, U.S. immigration officials say, the flow has fallen even for illegal
immigrants -- those most determined to get across the border, no matter what.

Along the Texas and New Mexico borders, about 11,300 illegal immigrants
were apprehended between Sept. 11 and Sept. 27. Officials say that was a
decline of more than 30 percent from the same period last year.

Along the banks of the Rio Grande, which courses through Matamoros, only a
handful of aspiring migrants hid in reeds waiting to attempt a furtive swim
to the other side.

In most border towns, bilingualism is essential in business, and hustling
to make a buck, legitimately or not, is a fact of life. The border is both
a dynamic component to the U.S. and Mexican economies and a sieve for drugs
and illegal immigrants. Leaders in both countries acknowledge that its
porous nature threatens national security.

Visas Not Extended

The sharp fall in legal crossings from Mexico is blamed, in part, on delays
caused by more thorough inspections, which require virtually all vehicles'
trunks and engine compartments to be checked.

But another reason for the decline is the expiration last Sunday of
millions of visas that Mexicans carry on the border and that allowed them
temporary entry to the United States.

The expectation among U.S. border merchants was that Congress would vote
for an extension of the old visas so that holders still could enter the
United States while new, more tamper-proof cards were being issued. But
after the terrorist attacks, Congress has become consumed by a flurry of
proposals to clamp down on visas for foreign students and others.

Some of the terrorists who crashed jets into the World Trade Center in New
York and the Pentagon in Washington entered the United States on student visas.

"We want the border to be as secure as anyone else" does, said Steve
Ahlenius, Chamber of Commerce president in McAllen, Texas, which is near
Matamoros and directly across the border from Reynosa, "but unfortunately,
the issue of the crossing cards has gotten tied up with security issues."

In McAllen, Mexican nationals spent $901 million in 1998. That amount
represents 35 percent of the area's entire retail sales.

Ahlenius said business representatives are mobilizing to try to persuade
President Bush to issue an executive order for an extension on the border
visas. If it doesn't happen, they fear, sales losses in a few more weeks
are going to approach dangerous levels.

Merchants also are worried that the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs
Service won't be able to maintain increased staffing at the border, which
would compound delays.

Customs 'Spread Thin'

For a week after the attacks, delays increased for trucks and cars waiting
to cross the border. Passenger vehicles that used to move through the
border in a matter of minutes were forced to wait as long as four hours.
Delays persist, but they have decreased with the reassignment of more
immigration and customs agents, more overtime and the cancellation of
vacations.

"We're really spread thin," Customs Service spokesman Dean Boyd said.
"Congress has got to pass something soon to keep this up."

Businesses here have complained for years that only about 50 percent of the
number of immigration inspectors really needed at the border have been
posted there.

Instead, funding has been directed at the Border Patrol to focus on
catching undocumented immigrants.

Security along the U.S.-Mexico border has focused largely on illegal
immigration and the immense narcotics trafficking industry that smuggles in
as much as 70 percent of the cocaine found on U.S. streets.

With greater vehicle checks, drug seizures dropped along the border after
the Sept. 11 attacks. But seizures are back to normal now, officials say,
probably because traffickers face getting killed if they don't try to move
their product and pay their bills.

Within the last few months, federal police in Matamoros discovered small
groups of Poles, Ukrainians and Macedonians passing through Mexico
illegally on their way to the United States.

Mexican police along other parts of the border have seized people from Arab
countries, testimony to how widespread the global smuggling industry has
become.

"We have to get smarter," Matamoros customs agent Adrian Gallardo said.
Gallardo's agents use a computerized system to select vehicles and people
to search to check if they are smuggling guns, bullets, drug money,
contraband clothes and even food into Mexico.

Now, Mexican officials are looking for suspicious non-American foreigners,
as well.

Gallardo said, "We have to accept that national security is a priority for
both countries."