McALLEN, Texas—While poor Mexicans cross the border to take advantage of higher wages and a social safety net, their wealthy countrymen are seizing on the slowing U.S. economy to achieve their own American corporate dream.

Anyone unfamiliar with the U.S.-Mexico border region might expect that private investment only flows from north to south. The Mexican side of the border in south Texas is loaded with factories that American companies have opened since NAFTA cleared the way for them to take advantage of inexpensive labor.

But between the two countries, billions of dollars are moving in both directions each year. In South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, Mexicans and their corporations are pouring their money into real estate, businesses and retail shopping on the U.S. side.

Factors at work in the money streaming north include valuable real estate at reasonable prices, a desire to access American consumers, opportunities created by a cooling economy and weaker dollar, as well as amenities such as shopping, South Padre Island and putting distance between their businesses and the kidnappings and drug cartel violence.

“They prefer to purchase land in the U.S. because they consider it good as gold,” said Gilberto Salinas, a spokesman for the Brownsville Economic Development Council. “There’s money there (in Mexico). We’re the ones going to them.”

There is no regional data on how much Mexicans are investing in South Texas, but Keith Patridge, president and chief executive of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, said “the No. 1 misconception is that there’s no money in Mexico.”

Patridge said he senses “a marked increase in investment moving north from Mexico.”

National data reflect that trend.

In 2006, Mexican companies’ investment in the U.S. grew by 60 percent to $6.1 billion. U.S. companies’ investment in Mexico is far larger, but grew only 13 percent to $84.7 billion during the same year, according to preliminary figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. In 1999, Mexican companies’ direct investment in the U.S. was $1.7 billion.

In Texas, Mexican companies’ affiliates held $1.6 billion in property, plant and equipment in 2005, the most recent year for which state-level data is available from the Commerce Department. That was up from $1.4 billion in 2002, putting Texas second only to California in Mexican direct investment.

Mexican companies operating in the U.S. also account for 4 percent of the jobs attributed to foreign direct investment in Texas, compared to 1 percent for the country overall. An article published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in November attributed that to “Mexico’s proximity to Texas and the market opening under the North American Free Trade Agreement.”