Despite Trade Boom, Mexico, California Not Trading Ideas

WASHINGTON — After an official visit to California recently, Jesus Reyes Heroles, the new Mexican ambassador, reached a startling conclusion: The more Californians and Mexicans trade with each other, the less they seem to know about each other.

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement ended almost all tariffs between the United States and Mexico in 1993, California exports to Mexico have almost doubled. Only Texas exports more to Mexico. California-Mexico trade is now $25 billion a year.

Yet, according to Reyes Heroles, the number of visits by Californian businesspeople and public officials to Mexico is on the decline.

“Businessmen and public officials are not talking much, are not understanding the benefits gotten out of NAFTA,” he told a few reporters on his return to Washington. “I would like to increase the knowledge in California about what is going on in Mexico. I would like to intensify the number of public officials and businessmen going down to Mexico.”

The 45-year-old Reyes Heroles, assigned to Washington in November, met Gov. Pete Wilson for the first time during his three-day visit to California in mid-April. Although the governor has a rather sinister image in Mexico because of his espousal of Proposition 187, which attempts to eliminate some social service benefits to illegal immigrants, Reyes Heroles said the one-hour conversation in Sacramento convinced him that “we have many more points of convergence than difference.”

“We both agreed that it was important to California, Mexico and the United States that there is a good relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.”

Reyes Heroles said, in fact, that the immigration issue did not seem to trouble many Californians anymore. “To my surprise, the immigration issue is not what it was three to four years ago. It’s not a hot issue.”

The ambassador said immigration experts told him that “the issue of immigration goes up [in California] when the economy is slackening.”

The California economy is not slackening now, said Reyes Heroles, who attributes part of the state’s health to NAFTA. Exports to Mexico accounted for 169,000 jobs in California, he said.

The ambassador came to California clearly expecting to find many concerns about immigration. In fact, at meetings of World Affairs Councils in San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles, he introduced panels of experts who discussed what is known as the U.S.-Mexico Binational Study of Migration.

The governments of both countries commissioned this study by 10 Mexican and 10 American scholars and demographers. The study was hailed originally as a wonderful example of binational cooperation. But, when released in August, the group’s report evoked little enthusiasm in the Clinton administration.

Some findings evidently contradicted cherished beliefs of U.S. immigration officials. The specialists wrote, for example, that Mexican migration to the United States had peaked and would decline and that significant numbers of illegal immigrants were recruited by labor brokers hired by unscrupulous American employers.

That probably explains why the Mexican ambassador--and not any U.S. official--was promoting the results of the binational study in California.

Wherever he stopped in California, Reyes Heroles produced a sheaf of statistics as evidence of the state’s close economic ties with Mexico.

Mexico, behind both Japan and Canada as an importer of California goods in 1993, moved to second place behind Japan by 1997. In 1997 alone, California exports to Mexico increased by 33% to $12 billion. Mexico purchased 11% of all California’s exports to foreign countries last year.

“We have a long-standing relationship with California, and we have to look forward to what we can do together.”