If the 24 counties on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico were a 51st state, that state would rank last in per capita income and high school graduation rates, if you didn't count San Diego County in California -- the wild card in this two-year study by the University of Texas at El Paso's Institute for Policy and Economic Development.

But even with San Diego County, the study -- unveiled today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. -- showed that the hypothetical state would rank last in the number of health-care professionals.

The 246-page report, titled "At the Crossroads: Border Counties in Transition," looks into a variety of topics, including population, income, labor and unemployment, job growth, public and higher education, environment, health and health care, trade and border traffic, immigration, housing, crime and law enforcement and the "fiscal balance of payments" measuring how much this region gets from the federal government -- compared to "other" states.

According to one summary in the U.S. Newswire, the region has a high dropout rate, heavy dependence on federal government assistance and high rates of tuberculosis and diabetes.

And the border region -- no surprise, here -- suffers from the adverse impact of illegal immigration, according to a report in USA Today.

For a copy of the study's executive summary, go to the Web site for the U.S./Mexico Border Counties Coalition (pdf), which commissioned the study.

The counties covered in the study include: San Diego and Imperial counties in California; Yuma, Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties in Arizona; Hidalgo, Luna and Dona Ana counties in New Mexico; and, in Texas, El Paso, Hudspeth, Culberson, Jeff Davis, Presidio, Brewster, Terrell, Val Verde, Kinney, Maverick, Webb, Zapata, Starr, Hidalgo and Cameron counties.

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