Trump scare spurs bold bid by Mexico’s tech hub

There’s a tech-loving governor in Mexico who sees opportunity in the hassles the Trump administration might create for companies eager to hire foreign engineers and coders: He’ll find cubicles for them.

Aristoteles Sandoval has been making his pitch to Silicon Valley, selling what he considers the world’s second-best technology nerve centre to the likes of Facebook and Tesla.

If you can’t import the talent you need, Sandoval has been telling them, there’s a way around the problem in Guadalajara. After all, most of the big companies have research centres, factories or satellite offices in the picturesque city. Why not park your non-American workers a four-hour flight from San Francisco?

“We’ll take you,” Sandoval said as he sat at his desk in Casa Jalisco, the official residence of the governor of Jalisco state. “We’re tolerant and inclusive and think talent has no borders. Brilliant minds will always have a place here.”

That could, and should, be interpreted as a dig at U.S. President Donald Trump, who has galvanized the industry with orders to ban immigration from some mostly Muslim countries and freeze the expedited processing of H-1B visas for specially skilled workers. “We had to raise our hand,” Sandoval said.

The governor toured Silicon Valley in February and said he talked with more than 40 executives from companies including Microsoft who were “very interested.” “The interest is absolutely there,” said Bismarck Lepe, founder and CEO of Wizeline, a business applications and software provider. Though it’s based in San Francisco, its main operations are on a Guadalajara campus that has the full Silicon Valley vibe going, with ping-pong and foosball tables and scooters for employees, who get free meals.

Lepe, a former product manager for Google whose Mexican-born parents moved to America as migrant field workers, said he opened the Guadalajara office in 2013 because the U.S. had gotten “way too expensive.” The 182 people on the payroll there — where wages are about three times less — hail from more than 10 countries, including Egypt and France.

As much as 40 per cent of the workforce in the city of 1.5 million is tied to tech, as are 52 per cent of its exports, according to Sandoval’s office. After becoming governor in 2013, he moved to enhance that by creating the state Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology to oversee the promotion of what he called a “culture around innovation.”