During her two-day trip, Foreign Secretary Ruiz Massieu will hold an interactive dialogue with young IME scholarship recipients, launch the "Build on Your Land" Migrant Housing Program and participate in the Plenary Session of the Arizona-Mexico and Sonora-Arizona Commissions.

Arizona is the sixth largest state in the United States and ranks 14th in population (6.6 million, of which 1.8 million (27.1%) are of Mexican descent and 500,000 (7.8%) are first-generation Mexicans.  Mexico has 5 consulates in Arizona to serve Mexicans who live in or visit the state: three on the border (Nogales, Douglas and Yuma) and two more in Phoenix and Tucson.  

Mexico and Arizona share a 599-kilometer border. There are ten border crossings between the California-Baja California border.

65,000 people travel from Mexico to Arizona daily for business trips, vacations, sightseeing or shopping. This amounts to 7.3 million dollars a day, 23,400 direct jobs and 160,000 indirect jobs.