Work willingness eases drudgery for migrants
Faced with asylum wait, some jump at job offers
TIJUANA, Mexico — Before dawn each morning, migrants slip away from a Tijuana shelter within sight of the U.S. border to head to jobs across this sprawling city. Moving solo or in pairs, they are easily recognized by their determined strides.
By sunrise, another crowd has gatheredatacornerneartheshelter to wait for job offers. On a recent morning, a dozen migrants scrambled into the bed of a Dodge pickup, their enthusiasm bringing a chuckle from the driver.
The migrants didn’t even know where they were going or when they would be back — some carried bedrolls — but said the work would be peeling tomatoes.
Facing a likely monthslong wait in Tijuana before getting the chance to request asylum in the United States, many migrants are looking for work. Others who have already decided to stay in Mexico have applied for, and in some cases received, permits to workinmexico.
It’s something the Mexican authorities have encouraged all the migrants to do in the hopes that jobs will help them put down roots here rather than crossing into the United States.
In most cases, the migrants are relieved to have something that takes them away from the miserable conditions in the overcrowded shelter, where the hours pass slowly, and puts some money in their pockets.
“Here you make a little money,” said Nelson David Landaverde, a 21-year-old Honduran who was out looking for food for his 16-month old son when someone approached and asked if he wanted to work at a carwash.
He didn’t think twice. He and his pregnant wife have put their names on an informal list of thousands of potential applicants for asylum in the U.S., but in the meantime he’s eager to earn money to make their lives a little easier in Tijuana.
The job pays about 75 cents per car, and by washing as many as 10 cars on a good day he hopes to take in more than Mexico’s minimum wage, which is less than $5 a day.
While authorities have closed the shelter near the border and relocated many of the migrants to another more distant shelter, hundreds have refused to leave the old one and are camped outside. The reason many give is that they have found jobs nearby.
Marco Rosales, a Honduran immigrant who has lived in Tijuana for eight years, stood in the street surrounded by Central American migrants eager for his job advice.
“Don’t come here with the mentality of Honduras,” he said. “This is a new country, a new state where you can change yourself if you want to.”
He had room that morning for only a handful to work at another nearbycarwash,buthewassurehe could find work for more later if they were willing.
“I’m trying to explain to them that you’ll get ahead doing things the right way,” he said, when asked why he had urged them to work instead of joining a march to the border. “If we do things the wrong way, we’re not going to get anywhere. If they want to march to close the border, it’s not going to accomplish anything.”
At a downtown location, migrants were gathered to start the paperwork to apply for temporary visas in Mexico that would allow them to work legally. Once they get their Mexican identification numbers, they can meet with recruiters for assembly plants, where turnover is high and jobs are always available.
Baja California state officials say they have identified thousands of jobs that the migrants could apply for.