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The United States has become awfully hostile to immigrants crossing its southern border in recent years—unless you have money. Wealthy Mexicans fleeing the security crisis there have helped

make the Texas border economy the strongest in the nation. The Brookings Institute reported recently that the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metropolitan area ranked first in job creation among

the nation’s 100 largest metro areas. The power of the peso hasn’t been lost on Texas’s border communities. Cities up and down the Rio Grande are doing everything they can to encourage more

Mexicans to invest and open businesses in Texas. This month, the Weslaco Economic Development Corp. (EDC) petitioned the Department of Homeland Security to allow Mexican nationals to land

private planes at the municipal airport. Passengers could call ahead and have their landing expedited by U.S. Customs. “If you are in Mexico City you would call Progreso Bridge and say, this

is our credit card number, this is our plane, this is who is on it,” Hernan Gonzalez, the Weslaco EDC executive director, told the _McAllen_ _ Monitor_. “They would already be in a registry

… and then the officers would come and clear you based upon when you are going to land.” In nearby McAllen, the influx of exiles eager to start businesses prompted the city’s economic

development corporation to petition the U.S. government for a regional center to provide investment visas faster. Mexicans who invest $500,000 or more in a company that creates a least 10

jobs can obtain U.S. residency in a matter of months, bypassing the lengthy immigration backlog. The role Mexicans have played in rescuing Texas’s economy during a tough economic recession

isn’t acknowledged enough in the ongoing immigration debate, says Keith Partridge, president of the McAllen Economic Development Corp. “Our area was the first in the nation to return to

prerecession economic levels,” he says. “A lot of that was due to investors from Mexico.”