Border Town of Nogales Experiencing Decline in Business

The foreclosure crisis followed by the recession has not spared the remote border town of Nogales in Arizona. Business is now dull.

Immediately after the rush in the morning at a McDonald’s outlet in Nogales few customers linger on. Two years previously when Gael Sylvia Pullen purchased the franchise and started business the joint was choc-a-bloc with customers who spoke Spanish.

This eatery like many other businesses within view of the international border is reliant to a big extent on Mexico. Pullen explained, “And the fact of the matter is there is between 24,000 and 30,000 people on this side of the border. There are 200-plus thousand on the Mexico side. That’s our customer base.”

With each passing day that customer base is not being reachable. Consequently many businesses are downing shutters. Those who have lived all their lives here say that today Nogales has become a ghost town. Since 2003 legal crossing of border has fallen by 1 million individuals. With agents tightening inspection on both sides the movement to and fro has become inconvenient to many. There are not enough personnel and this has led to long lines of waiting cars. The latest slap came from the global recession.

Pullen said, “Someone once described it to me — specifically my accountant — as us being in the middle of a perfect economic storm.”

The same story is being repeated along the border line from Tijuana to Juaraz said Gordon Hanson of University of California, San Diego. He said, “The economic downturn that the U.S. has been experiencing in the past 18 months has hit international trade and international commerce particularly hard.”

Hanson explained that Mexican citizens who reside in the border towns are directly affected by the recession raging in USA. Jumbo American manufacturing units on the Mexican side of the border have cut down on production of items like seat belts and televisions. This has led to job slashes.

Without much money to spend and more security formalities to cross the border the people on the Mexican side are preferring to stay in their homes. He said, “What increased security presence on the border does by increasing wait times is throw sand into the wheels of commerce. It’s going to slow everything down.”

Business in Nogales has been reduced to a crawl. But officials on both sides are sitting up to the problem and there are plans afoot to expand the port of entry soon.

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