Mexico could be one of the rare countries who will benefit tremendously from the collapse of globalization. It’s not simply their proximity to the United States that will cause this boom for Mexico. Like all overnight success stories, this story has been many years in the making.

Mexico has been working hard to prepare for emerging opportunities. They have been building out infrastructure, training their people and becoming quite good at value added work.

Border Region

If you have been watching the news about Mexico over the last dozen years, you have likely seen a lot of ugly news about cartels and crimes in northern Mexico. While that is true, and it certainly is all nasty business, it doesn’t tell the entire story.

In the last few years, the region at the US Mexican border has become a complete mess. The location of this border leads some to believe that this is solely an issue between the two countries and their nationalities. But regardless of the noise, this is not a good representation of what is happening.

It was surprising for us to learn that the bulk of the people currently crossing the US Mexican border are not actually from Mexico. In fact, it turns out that the height of Mexican immigration into the United States peaked prior to 2000 accounting for 59% of all Mexican migrants in the US today, followed by 28&percent; that arrived prior to 2009 leaving only 13&percent; from 2010 on, according to migrationpolicy.com. Since then, we have actually seen an increase of migration from the more rural parts of Mexico towards the southern region. This is a location where Mexico is building a tremendous amount of infrastructure, and opportunity for their people.

So much opportunity actually, that a great deal of the Mexican people are choosing to move to these regions, as opposed to crossing into the United States. Given the situation, that makes a lot of sense. It is tough to move out of your country. It is hard to live someplace with a different language, and with a different culture. It just makes sense that most people would rather remain in their own culture. They would rather remain with their family, and a place you are familiar with. That is assuming, there is a place they can go, where there is opportunity; and there certainly is.

Southern Region

The southern part of Mexico, there is quite a different story than what is going on in the border region. The states that surround Mexico City are beginning to boom. This region has become a major powerhouse of the Mexican manufacturing industry.

They are expanding their high tech manufacturing and their secondary operations capabilities. These are really good jobs. They are really well paying jobs, and it is steady work. Moreover, this is the type of production that we really need as manufacturing starts to return from other parts of the globe.

Collaboration

Different nations have different resources that make them great. Sadly, over the last few decades, the United States trend has shown to not be all that productive when it comes to manual labor. Some have even gone as far as to say Americans have become spoiled and lazy.

I have even heard some really narrow minded people make statements along the lines of “we need immigration from Mexico, otherwise who will clean our houses, and pick our crops.” Honestly, I was left speechless. After several seconds of trying to find my words, all I could say was “WOW”.

It’s possible that American labor is too expensive to compete on the world market. But it‘s also possible that there are a great deal of Americans who simply believe they are too good for this sort of work.

This could prove to be a major problem for the American economy as the global supply chain contracts. However, Mexico‘s foresight to this problem and their initiative to build up their industry, could prove to be a really important partnership in the following decades.

It is really great to see Mexico get behind their manufacturing sector and to lay the groundwork for an expanding sector. It is wonderful to see them building out their capabilities and creating a strong job market. I always love to see any group of hard working people work together to build a better tomorrow.