Mexican President Felipe Calderon and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during a meeting in Mexico. Border state governors met last week.

The El Paso Times has a story today, part of a series, on the impact on the local economies of the congested/inefficient border crossing system at El Paso-Juárez:

Efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, prevent terrorism and spot a growing number of drug loads are slowing business down at a time when the Juárez maquiladora industry is booming.

Manufacturing officials and truckers on both borders have reported wait times of up to three hours for cars and three to five hours for commercial trucks. Some shipments have been stuck in Mexico because trucks were still in line by the time the cargo facility closed, a disaster for just-in-time deliveries that are the bread and butter of the region.

In his live national network interview this morning during the program CNN Sunday Morning, MATT Executive Director Lionel Sosa spoke about the work MATT.org is doing to ensure the prosperity of the U.S. and Mexico. Sosa highlighted MATT's work on immigration, the successful Micro Loans program and a new project with Henry Cisneros called "Our Pledge."

Separately CNN en Espanol was in San Antonio last week to interview Sosa and spent a day filming his work. The segment will air in the coming days as part of a special Hispanic Heritage Month series.

The Associated Press has a brief report out of Mexico on this year's border governors conference. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff spoke at the 25th such meeting yesterday. He is pictured here in an AP story along with the  governors of California and Arizona.

USA Today has another feature story out of Mexico in today's paper about age discrimination that apparently in widespread. The American system is far from perfect, but it seems to me that that American labor laws and the well-known workers' rights make an enormous difference in the lives of millions of Americans who might otherwise be passed over for jobs. The prohibition of age discrimination has been law for more than thirty years. See these excerpts from the USA Today article:

Although slimy hiring practices are widespread in Mexico — want ads for female secretaries with "good presentation" are notorious — age discrimination is the most common, labor-rights groups say.

The practice robs Mexico's economy of experienced workers, discourages people from investing time in post-graduate degrees that could help the country advance and drives professionals into the vast, untaxed sector of odd jobs and street vending, experts said. It also happens to be illegal, but Mexico's labor laws are rarely enforced.

Mexican authorities admit they are lax in enforcing laws against age discrimination.

Mexico's Law to Prohibit and Eliminate Discrimination also outlaws age-based hiring practices but does not specify a punishment.

Still, only three people submitted complaints about age discrimination to the National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination that year, according to the annual report of the government-run agency.

The offenders aren't just Mexican companies. In one recent newspaper ad, Office Depot, of Delray Beach, Fla., sought a checkout supervisor age 22 to 35 for a store in a Mexico City suburb.

The Dallas Morning News has a feature story, which I saw in the Miami Herald today, that focuses on the booming resort communities at Los Cabos in Mexico. This stands out to me:

Construction here is booming. U.S. tourists and residents arrive in droves -- buying million-dollar homes or paying hundreds for luxurious overnight hotels. The economy is growing at an average rate of 15 percent, compared with 3 percent for the rest of the country.

The result: fierce competition for Mexican workers by both U.S. and Mexican employers in Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo -- a resort community commonly known as Los Cabos.

In many ways, this area represents the kind of prosperity that Mexico wants to duplicate in other parts of the country to keep its workers at home. And much of that investment -- in the billions of dollars -- comes from Americans seeking a second home and a different lifestyle.

According to a report out today from Reuters, the recent attack on a Mexican oil pipeline by Mexican rebels has had a huge economic impact:

When Marxist saboteurs blew up natural gas pipelines in Mexico last week, the only factory in the world to make the Volkswagen New Beetle shuddered to a halt that lasted for seven days. The Sept. 10 bombings by the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, hit so hard that they will dent figures for Mexico's crucial industrial sector this month. That is more bad news for an economy already stunted by the U.S. slowdown. President Felipe Calderon's government is worried by the ability of a small group of guerrillas to hit at the heart of the economy of a major U.S. trading partner.

The U.S. Federal Reserve announced it has cut a key interest rate. ABC News reports: The Fed announced Tuesday that it was reducing its target for the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other, from 5.25 percent to 4.75 percent.

Bloomberg reports: Mexico's currency rose, snapping a four-day decline, as traders anticipated the Federal Reserve will cut its benchmark lending rate today, making returns on Mexican fixed-income securities more attractive.

And Reuters reports Mexican "stock surge" on the Fed news.

That's precisely the question San Antonio Express-News columnist David Hendricks asks in his column today which focuses on author Ted Fishman's book titled "China Inc.":

A few manufacturers that moved production to China from Mexico have returned to Mexico, for a variety of reasons. Mexico still lost as much of its manufacturing base proportionately as the United States did, if not more, when China ramped up its capacity in the 1990s.

Mexico is on the upswing, however, this year. In the first six months of 2007, Mexico's foreign direct investment reached $13.24 billion, which is a good year by itself. The surprised Mexican government has raised its 2007 projection to $23 billion from $18.3 billion.

If U.S. companies are investing more in Mexico, it is likely they also are investing in additional U.S. plants and expansions. U.S. manufacturing orders rose in five of the first seven months of 2007, according to government statistics.

This is a timely topic not only because of the concerns with toys made in China, but also because our interests in strengthening the economies of Mexico and the United States. MATT Foundation’s innovative Hecho en América (Made in the Americas) program is currently under develop and when it launches it will help identify and promote products manufactured in the Americas and sold in the United States as a way to create jobs throughout our continent. MATT believes that by building demand for products that are made in the Americas and sold in the United States, we will help create new jobs throughout the continent and promote economic growth in the region.

President George W. Bush has written a memo to the Secretary of State in which he explains he has determined Mexico to be among a list of major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries including much of Latin America (ie. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela).