MONTERREY, Mexico — They arrived in a steady stream to a high-rise Monterrey hotel ballroom — Mexican captains of industry and small-business owners.
By the time former San Antonio resident Monica Sanchez, director of the State of Texas NAFTA Office in Mexico City, stepped to the microphone, the largest-ever Invest in Texas seminar was under way with 160 registrants in attendance. For six hours, the participants heard presentations about what was required to move to and invest in Texas: the incentives, visas, financing, taxes, corporate laws, real estate rules and assistance programs.
Registration cost $50 and had been capped a week earlier to keep the audience size manageable. Speakers said another 160 were turned away.
At stake for the registrants is the future of their businesses and their families. The vast majority of them want out of Mexico.
They don't need to be told about the nasty turn in violence from the ongoing war between rival drug-smuggling cartels. They live with it and the threat of kidnappings and extortion that help the cartels finance their operations. The Mexico City office has staged Invest in Texas seminars in Mexico since 2001, when only 20 or 30 people showed up. This year, the state plans six seminars in several large Mexican cities.
The Monterrey seminar was one of three of its kind Wednesday. At the same time, more than 100 people attended a seminar held in San Antonio by the University of Texas at San Antonio Small Business Development Center and by the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos.
In Edinburg, UT-Pan American also held a seminar Wednesday attended by more than 100 people. Combined, about 400 people met Wednesday on the same subject of how to move to Texas.
