Local business leaders assembled at the Frank W. Mayborn Civic and Convention Center to learn more about the state of the economy on Thursday afternoon during the CentraLand Title Company 2024 Economic Summit.
CentraLand Title Company has hosted the summit since 2008 and one of its owners Thomas Baird told the Telegram that helping the community is their motivation to host them.
“We need to do something for our community because a rising tide raises all boats. If we can do something that makes our whole community to be a better place to live … where we have good government (and) where we have good jobs … then we’re going to have a better community to live in,” Baird said.
Dr. Mark Dotzour, a real estate economist from College Station, was the keynote speaker at the summit.
Dotzour advised potential home buyers to consider inflation rising in the near future before investing.
“If you’re thinking about buying a house (and some people do this now), they buy a house and hope they can (refinance) it later for quite a bit less cost. I would do that now knowing full well that sometime in the next 18 to 24 months, the CPI (consumer price index) will be at rock bottom … and then watch happens as inflation starts going back up,” Dotzour said.
Dotzour explained that sanctuary cities such as New York City will bankrupt themselves because current immigration policies are not helping more migrants make a living.
“If I hire somebody that is illegal, the federal government is going to fine me. It’s my fault and it’s going to cost me $8,000 in legal fees and processing fees to get that person legal and what’s to stop them from leaving my company the day after that happens,” Dotzour said.
“I don’t care if we have 4 million people come across the border next year. If we’re not processing any of them to become legally employable, then we’ve got this massive labor shortage and it doesn’t seem to be going away.”
Dotzour also shared that more U.S. companies are cutting ties with China and as a result, Mexico has become the No. 1 importer to the U.S.
“We don’t have the labor so it’s going to move to Mexico because they have the labor,” Dotzour said. “They know how to do stuff too down there and you say, ‘There’s a lot of crime in Mexico.’ When the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) corridor was in full gear, they had plenty of crime down there at the time and they knew how to deal with it. China’s going to have a real hard time when we turn the whole country (and) the whole world turns their back on them.”