I. Economic Factors Affecting Cross-border Transportation By the
end of the 1990s, the population in the largest Texas counties
and Mexican states along the Texas-Mexico border had topped a
combined 13.6 million. According to Mexico’s preliminary census
estimates, the population of the Mexican states bordering
Texas—Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas—had
increased 22 percent, to almost 12 million, from 1990 to 2000,
adding 2.2 million residents. On the U.S. side, the population
of El Paso, Webb, Hidalgo and Cameron counties increased about
391,000 inhabitants, from 1.4 million in 1990 to 1.8 million in
1999—a 29 percent increase. This population increase was due in
large part to NAFTA, which helped catalyze border
industrialization and the development of the maquiladora
industry. Since NAFTA was implemented in 1994 and through March
2000, Mexico’s maquiladora industry has been the most dynamic
sector of the Mexican economy, adding 1,400 new plants and
creating about 640,000 new jobs—increases of