Mexicans fleeing violence in Juarez spur a boom in El Paso
By Ana Campoy
The Wall Street Journal
The buttoned-down city of El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border feels like a boomtown these days, as entrepreneurs fleeing drug violence in Ciudad Juárez head across the Rio Grande to open hip clubs and hot restaurants.
The violence in Mexico has provided an unexpected economic boost to El Paso, a city of more than 600,000 residents at the westernmost tip of Texas.
El Paso's unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in September, equal to the national average but far lower than in other border towns such as Brownsville and McAllen.
Cindy Ramos-Davidson, chief executive of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said her staff was swamped with requests from Juárez businesspeople wanting to settle in El Paso. They started more than 200 companies in the 12 months ended July 31, a 40 percent jump from the same period last year.
"It's the largest migration of wealthy Mexican nationals [to El Paso] since the Mexican Revolution," said Beto O'Rourke, an El Paso city councilman, referring to the decade-long rebellion that began in 1910.
Not all newcomers to El Paso are refugees from violence. Other factors helping to boost the city's economy include a multibillion-dollar expansion of Fort Bliss, a military base that is attracting thousands of soldiers and aiding the local building industry, said Bill Gilmer, a senior economist at the El Paso branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
But El Paso is drawing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Juárez residents looking for a safe place to live.
There is no official estimate of the influx, but real-estate agents report a bump in home sales to Juárez residents. The apartment occupancy rate is about 92 percent, higher than in cities such as Houston and Dallas, where occupancy rates have slipped below 90%, according to MPF Research, which compiles apartment market information.
It isn't hard to understand why: The number of murders in Juárez exploded in the spring of 2008 and grew to more than 300 a month by August and September 2009, the highest monthly levels in a particularly violent year.
