Year after year, come the last weekend before the Christmas holidays, thousands of visitors from across the U.S. rain down on Laredo as they make their way into Mexico to visit their places of origin.  We know them as paisanos.  The term was coined from a program the Mexican government initiated in 1993 to put a stop to corruption and reduce red tape faced by U.S. residents of Mexican origin as they returned home to visit loved ones.  Paisanos were (and are) of particular interest to Mexico after all, since they constitute one of the leading sources of income for the country in the form of remittances (funds sent by Mexican workers to families in Mexico).

And so it is that every year, for the Holiday season, thousands of paisanos hailing from major enclaves in the Midwest, the central U.S., and major metropolitan areas of Texas gather their families and load up the car (or van) with gifts for the folk back home and trek southward.  The dates are predictable - they leave on the weekend following the kids' release from school and return on the weekend before the kids start school. And, given Laredo's location along the I-35 corridor and its direct connection to major highways in Mexico, this becomes the point of crossing of preference on the Texas-Mexico border for the larger portion of these travelers. 

Laredo's infrastructure, with three international bridges for regular traffic, is not necessarily equipped to handle a heavy surge in traffic - since its narrow streets, particularly in the downtown area, bottleneck easily.  Yet, assuming a smoother flow of traffic given improved management and control, there are other factors that aggravate the situation:

• All U.S. registered vehicles traveling into Mexico require a temporary importation permit.  This creates a further delay since once vehicles cross the bridge, they must then stop at Mexican customs to process the necessary paperwork.
• All U.S. citizens and naturalized citizens require individual tourist permits.  While this may not be a major stumbling block, processing of each permit requires a few minutes. Minutes add up.
• Vehicles not intended to be returned to the U.S. require additional processing.  A number of paisanos bring vehicles intending to leave them with family; they must process the vehicle as an export product.

The result is long lines - 2 or 3 miles long - that clog up all lanes of I-35, its access roads, and the city's main thoroughfares leading downtown; and excessively long waits as vehicles inch forward.  Four or five-hour waits are not uncommon. For families with children (and most of them are) this tends to become a nightmare.  Vehicles avoid exiting the freeway so as not to lose their place in line - problems of a health nature arise, e.g., need to use bathrooms, buy food, etc. (heaven help us should a real medical emergency occur). Faced with this situation, many families actually exit their cars and walk across the freeway - posing a dangerous situation.

The return, on the weekend following the New Year, is just as dreadful, if not worse - except the traffic lines this time form on the Mexican side of the border.  The bridges get clogged up, nonetheless.  Cancellation of vehicle permits on the Mexican side, compounded by intensive homeland security measures, which require the clearing of all passengers and all vehicles (in this case loaded with luggage and purchases) slows down crossing to a snail pace.  This year, some vehicles reported wait times exceeding 8 hours.

Members of the local community have offered a number of solutions - e.g., set up an information booth at the city's entrance to offer guidance, improve traffic control with added security, provide information on radio, collaborate with Mexican customs to ensure proper staffing, etc.  While these offer some relief, the truth is that the situation is worsening year after year.  An although it is true that the sheer volume of travelers generate business for some in the community - mostly gas stations and fast food places - we fool ourselves thinking that they mean business for the larger retail sector.  Paisanos have one major interest - to get home as fast as possible.  They have no interest in Christmas shopping.

The local community needs to face up to the reality that while it is important that we be good citizens and provide a hospitable experience for all visitors, our international bridges constitute the lifeblood of the city.  Clogged bridges paralyze activity in the city.  They discourage visitors from Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, and other area communities (Christmas shoppers in the true sense of the word) from coming into town during the most important retail season of the year; and they literally stop all local traffic. Clogged access roads to downtown discourage local residents, in turn, from visiting this sector for their own shopping.

We ought to seriously consider a campaign starting two to three months before the Christmas season to inform residents in cities with large concentrations of Hispanics to choose alternate routes as they make their way into Mexico.  Perhaps even consider setting up a billboard on I-35 at the cutoff to Eagle Pass.  Encouraging paisanos to travel by way of Reynosa or Piedras Negras will not break our economy.  It may rather improve it, as it will allow an increased influx of Mexican shoppers during the congested holiday.  And even if we were to divert 30% of the paisano traffic to other ports, the remainder would still constitute a very large number of travelers passing through our city.

It is time that we truly act.  If we profess hospitality then let us encourage travelers to avoid hours-long waits.  Let's offer them a faster way home.  Lest we wait for a tragedy to occur on one of our streets to prove us wrong.