El Paso, Texas, the nation's largest border city, has boasted unusually rapid growth in population, labor force and jobs since the 1970s — all hallmarks of progress in the growth-minded southwest. In the 1980s the city's economy created jobs 80 percent faster than did the U.S. economy. Yet El Paso Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), already one of the poorest among major cities, has gotten poorer relative to the rest of the country, with chronically higher unemployment and lower earnings. Poverty in the city is now more than twice the national average and average earnings a third below it.

This study looks for the reasons for the city's "growth without prosperity" in demographic factors, such as persistently high birth rates and rapid international migration, that shape the performance of the schools and the size and skills of the labor force and, in turn, the prevalence of low-wage labor-intensive industries.

In the absence of a major demographic turnaround, El Paso's economy faces a dismal future. The outlook is for further Tercermundización, a Latin American term for decline toward third world standards

http://www.cis.org/ImmigrationInElPaso-LaborMarket