U.S. lawmaker urges Mexico border curbs to stop flu

A U.S. Congressman urged the government on Wednesday to restrict travel over the Mexico border to prevent the spread of deadly swine flu, though analysts and local authorities said curbs would be costly and ineffective.

Mexico, the country hardest hit by the influenza outbreak, is the United States' third largest trading partner after Canada and China.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the State Department issued travel alerts, encouraging citizens to avoid any nonessential travel to Mexico - although border crossings and airports remain open.

The first U.S. fatality from the H1N1 flu strain was a Mexican toddler who had recently crossed into Texas from Mexico. U.S. officials have confirmed 65 cases of swine flu, most of them mild but with five hospitalizations in California and Texas.

"Travel between the United States and Mexico should be severely curtailed ... to all but essential traffic," Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Lewisville, Texas, told Reuters by telephone.

"Please don't underestimate this, it appears to be a very serious outbreak that appears to be getting worse rather than better," added Burgess, who is a medical doctor.

In recent days, other U.S. Congressman have called for restrictions on travel over the Mexico border, which is crossed by hundreds of thousands of people each day, who work, shop and visit family.

CLOSING THE BORDER NOT AN OPTION

Last weekend Rep. Eric Massa, a New York Democrat and member of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, urged the government "to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely." Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican, also called on the government to consider restrictions on traffic crossing from Mexico.

Last year, Mexican exports to the United States totaled $216 billion, with much of that trade crossing by land over the border.

Analysts and local authorities on the border said curbing travel would be ineffective, impractical and costly.

"The disease is not going to be stopped by closing the border. It's already in the United States ... so it will have no impact on transmission whatsoever," said Adela de La Torre, an economist and expert in border health issues at the University of California, Davis.

"Mexico and the United States are major trading partners, so anything that would create barriers to free trade would be very problematic. ... The economic impact would be devastating ... on both sides of the border," she told Reuters by phone.

Authorities in Brownsville, the Texas city where the first flu victim to die in the United States crossed from Mexico, said closing the city's border crossings was not an option.

"You got to understand. Texas does a lot of trade with Mexico ... Shutting down the bridges is not an option at this point," mayor Patricio M. Ahumada Jr. told Reuters.