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Mexican and Southern Arizonan leaders to improve cross-border trade and tourism

Posted at 6:43 AM, Aug 24, 2017
and last updated 2017-08-24 13:53:37-04

On Thursday, leaders from across Southern Arizona and Mexico are meeting to create more cross-border business and trade.

The goal of the meeting is to improve transportation in the region and make Southern Arizona and Mexico more tourist friendly.

Locally, this could translate into new roads and beautification projects. In terms of improving infrastructure, roads like: I-10, I-19, Mexico highway 15 and the proposed I-11 corridor would be included.

The Ari-Son Mega-region Council will also meet to discuss how to potentially tweak NAFTA to better help the region.KGUN9 spoke with a representative from the Maricopa Association of Governments who said NAFTA is not working as efficiently as it could be for the region, so they'd like to make changes.

More than 20 elected officials and two consulate representatives will be part of the meeting Thursday.

Another major discussion: potentially extending the border crossing card to the entire state of Arizona.