How Yuma economy benefits from Mexico
We Yuma residents may not realize how fortunate we are to have Mexico on our southern border. As a retired economist, let me count the ways.
It has been said there are three pillars to the Yuma economy: agriculture, tourism (especially in the winter), and the military (including Yuma Proving Ground). The biggest employer is agriculture, and it depends heavily on the labor of Mexicans who cross the border daily during the growing and harvesting season.
Unlike most American farms, the farms in and around Yuma are more labor-intensive. While Midwest corn and soybean farmers may work in enclosed, air-conditioned tractors costing $500,000 and automated combines costing one million dollars, our farmworkers labor over the crops they must weed and pick in all sorts of weather. For this they are paid the Arizona minimum wage of $11.00 per hour, although piece-work and certain jobs pay more. Although some Yuma-area residents, citizens and non-citizens alike, also perform this difficult work, Mexicans crossing the border daily make up a big share of this farm labor force.
Why are they so willing to do this work? Because the same labor in Mexico will earn $2 to $3 per hour. For that reason, relatively rich America is lucky to be next to relatively poor Mexico. Imagine if
Canada were on our southern border. Would affluent Canadians cross the border to work in our fields? Accordingly, what would Yuma-area agriculture look like without Mexican labor?
Economists often examine the work vs. leisure decisions people make. Whether to work more or less, to accept or reject a job offer, to work overtime or not, all boil down to weighing the value of work and its benefits compared to leisure. To a Mexican citizen choosing to cross the border daily to work in our fields, the “cost” is much more than eight hours of difficult labor. During peak winter months, the wait to cross the border can easily stretch into three demeaning hours of standing in line or sitting in cars, plus the time to get from the border to the fields and then back again, and then a drive or walk home. Such a “workday” can begin at 3:00 a.m. at the border and easily stretch to fourteen hours, leaving little time for sleep to recover from the ordeal.
I recently stopped at a harvesting operation to talk to workers and their supervisors about these conditions. They especially stressed the fact that they suffered from having too little time for sleep or to be with their families.
The wait at the border promises to get worse, as inspectors have been shifted to other duties due to the influx of asylum seekers. Current border waits are unusually long for June—what will they be during the growing season? Anecdotal evidence suggests some of our output may shift from the Yuma area to Mexico as a result.
Yuma agriculture competes with several agriculture areas in the country such as inland California and parts of Washington, to name two. But employers in those areas do not have our advantage of a willing and able labor force from a poorer country nearby. They must rely on a local labor force that is likely to demand higher wages than what prevail in Yuma.
Several other observations about our economic connection to Mexico: Our retail sales benefit from Mexican shoppers, as they get added variety and sometimes lower prices on this side of the border. It may be added that Mexico also benefits in that some of their citizens get the relatively higher wages earned by working in America.
Finally, I cannot resist commenting on the archaic, wasteful, demeaning, and unnecessary wait at the border. It adds to the workday, harms American retailers, inhibits tourism, and eats up real valuable estate on both sides of the border. That the border crossing goes from the downtown of San Luis to the far larger Mexican downtown is a historic anachronism that should have been remedied long ago. San Diego did it with their Otay Mesa crossing miles east of their downtown crossing. San Luis could do the same in the open desert to its east. Politicians, are you listening?