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TIJUANA, Mexico, Jan. 19-- Hector Aguilar is a U.S. citizen who works in San Diego, California, but lives across the border in Tijuana, in North Mexico's Baja California state. Almost daily, the 32-year-old travels from one side of the closely watched border to the other, as naturally as most people walk from one side of the street to the opposite. Aguilar, whose parents are Mexican, said he has spent his entire life going back and forth between the United States and Mexico. He was born in Los Angeles, spent childhood in Tijuana and afterwards and graduated from high school in San Diego. As an adult, Aguilar chooses to live in Tijuana because he finds it both economical and entertaining. He carries a U.S. passport and a mobile phone with a U.S. number, but tells people he is a Mexican. "There's nothing better than saying you are from Tijuana, because saying you are from elsewhere, like San Diego, sounds boring," Aguilar said, laughing. Aguilar is among the thousands of residents living along the dynamic Tijuana-San Diego border, which boasts one of the world's busiest traffic points, with 30 million crossings a year. A long and well-guarded fence with just three gateways divides the two cities, or together a market of 6.5 million people and an economy that generates 230 billion U.S. dollars a year, according to Mexico's Foreign Ministry. Between 70,000 and 100,000 people of both nationalities cross from one city to the other for study or work, Rodolfo Figueroa, a National Immigration Institute (INM) delegate in Baja California, told Xinhua. | 
