BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez issued a passionate call for regional collaboration and workforce modernization, warning economic leaders that South Texas must build a robust pipeline of high-paying jobs or risk losing its educated youth to larger metropolitan hubs.
Speaking before a gathering of economic development professionals, civic leaders, and business executives at a happy hour event hosted by regional marketing initiative RioPlex at IBC Bank’s corporate office in Brownsville, Cortez emphasized that public servants have a fundamental duty to expand opportunities and help residents realize their full potential.
When asking the audience whether the Rio Grande Valley has reached its full potential, the answer was an emphatic, unified "No."
“All of us in public service have a duty to try to make things better for the people that we serve. And how do you make things better for people we serve? We give them an opportunity. We give them an opportunity to really reach their full potential,” Cortez said.
To reach that untapped potential, Cortez stated, the border region must change how it presents itself to global investors. He urged community stakeholders to align under the vision promoted by RioPlex: marketing South Texas and Northern Mexico as an integrated, cross-border mega-region.
Cortez highlighted the region’s primary economic competitor: the powerhouse mega-region known as the “Texas Triangle,” anchored by Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio.
“Do you know that 67 percent of the people that live in Texas live in that triangle?” Cortez asked the audience, pointing out projections that the area is expected to absorb up to 80 percent of the state’s population in the coming decades. Furthermore, out of 360 corporate relocations and expansion projects in Texas, the vast majority went straight into the Texas Triangle.
“Ladies and gentlemen, that’s our competition,” Cortez urged. “How do we compete?”
The path forward, Cortez explained, lies in recognizing the physical and infrastructural limits of metropolitan growth in Central and North Texas while aggressively preparing South Texas to accept future spillover investment.
“The good news is eventually there will be saturation,” Cortez observed. “You can only put so much water in that bottle, and then you can’t put any more. So we have an opportunity to be that choice for continued growth, and the way that we’re going to be competitive is we have to provide what they’re providing.”
Top among those requirements is a sustainable, highly skilled labor force. Cortez pointed out a persistent challenge facing the Rio Grande Valley: negative net migration among educated young adults, commonly referred to as "brain drain."
“Today, we have a negative migration of the young people who are educated. They’re leaving, and they’re leaving because they’re not being rewarded by the education that they have, because we can’t match it with a job. All of you people here in economic development, we have a lot of work to do,” Cortez said.
Cortez challenged economic developers to focus on attracting capital investment that matches the skills of graduates produced by regional higher education institutions like the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) and Texas Southmost College (TSC).
Expressing optimism at the strong turnout in Brownsville, Cortez noted that the talent and resources in the room signaled a promising future for the RioPlex umbrella.
“This is where all of you come in, and that’s why I am drooling — I am so happy to see all of you here, because I see a lot of talent, I see a lot of resources here,” Cortez remarked. “When RioPlex gets fully going, this is going to be a wow area.”
He concluded with a reminder that internal rivalries between Valley municipalities only hinder progress on the state and national stage.
“We are in the right track. We can do things together better than apart,” Cortez emphasized. “We are not competing with one another. We’re competing with someone else.”
