It's a Thursday night at the San Diego Factory Outlet, just a short jaunt from the Mexican border, and the yellow and gold license plates of Baja California glitter in the parking lot lights.
Mexican consumers in search of more selection and better prices cross the border to spend their dollars and pesos at Kmart, Nike, Mikasa and the other 32 stores here. Upscale downtown department stores run shuttle buses to the border.Estimates are that Mexican shoppers account for anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the sales at south San Diego County stores. Statewide - from Hewlett-Packard to Bechtel, Blue Diamond to Bank of America, Mattel to San Diego Gas & Electric - trade with Mexico adds up to billions of dollars every year.
But now, amid hopes of increased trade under the North America Free Trade Agreement, a new issue threatens to drag down those relations: Immigration, and specifically Proposition 187.
The ballot measure, which would strip illegal immigrants of most public benefits, has prompted rallies from Tijuana to Mexico City and brought public denunciations from Mexico's president.
In California, tens of thousands of people have rallied and students have staged massive walkouts to protest the measure.
In Mexico, resentment is high. In October, a delegation of California business leaders got a nasty taste of the Prop 187-inspired backlash when they were snubbed on a business trip in Mexico City aimed at drumming up cross-border business.
Mexico's commerce secretary failed to show. So did his undersecretary. At a reception at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, a slate of prominent Mexican guests were conspicuously absent, their names tags left unclaimed at the door.
California ships 10 percent of its exports - $7 billion in computers, precision tools, telecommunications equipment, financial services and other goods to Mexico each year, second only to Texas among U.S. states.
Mexico, meanwhile, spends almost an equal amount in California. And Mexican companies like Cemex, a leading cement producer, and Vitro, the world's top glass manufacturer, have bases here.
Pointing to a 10 percent rise in cross-border trade, state officials say transactions with Mexico appear to be politics-proof.
"We are too deeply married economically for this to really damage relations with Mexico," said trade analyst Lloyd Day. "This is going to be over in a period of several weeks."
But others warn that the measure will hurt California's economy just as it begins a precarious rebound.
"A couple of months ago, what you heard was, `Oh, it's just all politics,"' said J. Ernesto Grijalva, a spokesman for the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. "Now I'm hearing people say `This could be a problem for us if it passes. This could hurt deals."'
Abe Lowenthal, director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California, agrees.
"The governor of California ought to think of California as a country. And if it were a country it ought to have a foreign policy. And if it had a foreign policy, Mexico ought to be its No. 1 priority. And if it's the No. 1 priority, you wouldn't undertake measures like this."