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 Editorials | Issues | September 2007 
Rich Mexicans Keep Parallel Lives at Home, in US
 Eugene L. Meyer - The New York Times
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| | Their motives are more than economic. They are also seeking a safe haven for themselves and their families, away from the threats of kidnapping, ransom and even murder that are routinely directed at wealthy Mexicans. |
Ana Luisa Sanchez Maccise, a Mexican citizen, is neither seeking a path to American citizenship nor living a fitful undocumented existence. Yet she lives and works in Houston, where she sends her son to a local private school. She has another home in Mexico City, where her husband still works. He visits his family in Houston regularly.
Maccise is among a small but growing group of Mexican citizens who are creating parallel lives in the sprawling Texas city; Dallas and San Antonio are other cities of choice.
Their motives are more than economic. They are also seeking a safe haven for themselves and their families, away from the threats of kidnapping, ransom and even murder that are routinely directed at wealthy Mexicans.
“Right now in Mexico City, the situation is not good because of safety problems,” said Maccise, 43. “You can be robbed anytime in any restaurant. You can’t drive a nice car. You can’t wear a nice watch. So I really like the U. S. because I feel free.”
Maccise lives and works in Houston on a business visa issued as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement. A treaty provision allows visas for those making a significant investment in a new business and also for those with Mexican companies doing business in the United States, along with their spouses and children.
U.S. State Department statistics, not broken down by city, show a national increase in the most popular business visa, to 72,613 last year from 57,721 in 2002.
Making the move from Mexico to Houston is both a cultural and logistical challenge, and an industry of professionals has grown up around the need for real estate agents, immigration lawyers, bankers and others to ease the way.
Mariana Saldana, a broker and owner at the Uptown Real Estate Group, is in no small part responsible for Maccise’s life in Houston. Saldana, 56, directed her to an immigration lawyer and helped her to rent space in the Galleria, a shopping mall in Houston, where Maccise runs a franchise of the Tane jewelry store. Tane specializes in expensive handmade jewelry and silver and gold art from Mexico. Saldana even arranged for telephone and cable service for Maccise.
Hoping to cement her client relationships, she also provides additional assistance. “We’re one stop,” she said. “If you need a Mercedes, I send you to a Mercedes dealer. A Porsche, I send you to a Porsche dealer. We’re like a concierge company. We have gardeners, a pool guy, everything they need. They don’t have to pick up the phone.”
Saldana has helped potential buyers find private schools for their children and even called a locksmith when a client forgot her key when taking her child to a community pool.
She said 80 percent of Uptown Real Estate’s business is with Mexicans who have a net worth of up to $ 100 million. Many pay cash for their homes and are unaffected by market cycles.
Mexicans prefer Houston, according to Saldana, because luxury homes there cost less than those in California, Miami or even Mexico City. And from Houston, there are some 40 daily flights to Mexican cities, with at least 20 to Mexico City, a twohour trip.
“I sometimes go to Mexico for lunch and come back on the 5 p. m. flight,” said Wilka Varela Toppins, a Puerto Rican-born Houston lawyer who works closely with Saldana to help Mexicans establish businesses in the U. S. This year, she said, she has helped to open more than 35 companies from Mexico City, versus about 20 in 2006.
“They’re here and they’re there,” she said of her clients living and working in both Mexico City and Houston. “They travel back and forth. They’re not interested in becoming U. S. citizens or renouncing Mexican citizenship. They just want to do trade, live here, pay taxes, be responsible residents and be safe.”
Maccise opened her store, where one piece of handmade jewelry sells for $ 17,000, six years after her first Houston real estate purchase, a condominium near the Galleria, used for weekend shopping trips. She is now living in her third home, which she bought last year for $ 1.3 million, having sold her first two properties through Saldana. Situated in Royal Oaks, a gated golf community, her four-bedroom house overlooks the 12th hole.
Like many upscale communities attractive to wealthy Mexicans, Royal Oaks has a high brick wall, multiple locked gates and car patrols. It is what Mexican buyers say they want when they move north, based on what they already have at home.
“We’re so used to having it, coming here, without all this you don’t feel OK, even though you are OK,” said Aldo Novi, an architect and builder who lives in The Woodlands, an affluent Houston suburb where he is building homes in the gated community of Carlton Woods.
Currently, Novi is building a $ 1 million home for Alejandro Chaoul, 38, who has lived in Royal Oaks for four years with his wife and children. Chaoul, who works for the Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex and travels back and forth, would like to move to Carlton Woods, where he and his family can live in a larger house in what he regards as an even more secure community.
“Seguridad” (Spanish for security ) in Houston is what Saldana includes in her advertisements in Mexican magazines. Also, through word of mouth — her “best advertising,” she says — she finds other clients.
On a recent weekday, Saldana spent 12 hours with Fernando Sanchez de Orando, 40, of Mexico City, who is planning to open a Houston branch of his family’s newsprint-brokerage business. After a two-day search, Sanchez contracted to buy a $ 1 million home in The Woodlands.
“I like the United States, Texas and Houston,” he said, “and my family and I want to make a change.” |
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