WE ARE GOING TO COME ROARING BACK
This year, San Ysidro is celebrating a special Thanksgiving — thanks for giving us our lives back!
After 20 long months of border restrictions, tourist visa holders were allowed to enter the U.S. via our land ports of entry starting on Nov. 8. San Ysidro suffered 20 months of family members being stranded from one another, 276 businesses closing, 2,200 jobs being lost and economies crashing — $1.3 billion of lost sales in San Ysidro alone. Thank you, Biden administration, for a long-overdue, but necessary, lifting of border restrictions!
We often say, “If Tijuana sneezes, San Diego catches the cold.” Few perceived we would literally be in such a situation. Luckily, San Diego County Board of Supervisors Vice Chair Nora Vargas understood that instead of separating an arbitrary fraction of us from one another, the answer to our wellness was to engage the Mexican Consulate and work together to ensure we are all vaccinated and safe to live all our essential lives. These efforts allowed, among others, more than 26,000 workers in Tijuana (members of our binational region) to be vaccinated. Thank you, Vice Chair Vargas, Mexican Consul General Carlos González Gutierrez and your teams!
To prove the pent-up need for cross-border travel, border crossings and border crossing lines are already above prepandemic levels. Thank you, cross-border tourists!
We are thankful to those mentioned above, and to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, National City Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis, Chula Vista Mayor Mary Salas-Casillas and San Diego City Councilmember Vivian Moreno for their tireless advocacy. But the hard, necessary work begins now.
San Ysidro has been impacted like no other community in the county and is going to require assistance like no other to recuperate — the definition of social equity. The San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce has devised a 2021-2022 San Ysidro Recovery Plan — a robust plan that includes infrastructure, political, educational and economic measures to ensure San Ysidro gets back on its feet and our region does not see itself in this situation again. Our plan includes a yearlong business assistance program to diversify San Ysidro businesses into e-commerce and infrastructure plans that will unify the two sides of our commercial corridor, improve our environment and greatly improve the welcome we give to visitors.
The recovery plan further includes re-establishing mobility options in San Ysidro, and creating a bridge deck park between East San Ysidro Boulevard and Camino de la Plaza and a block-to-block facelift program for its main commercial corridor.
Our recovery plan includes two political efforts to ensure senseless border closures do not happen again. Our plan calls for a borderwide mayoral advocacy group. Additionally, it calls for a Cabinet-level working group to actively measure border wait times’ effects on border communities’ and border states’ economies.
Most importantly, our recovery plan creates America’s Finest Front Door. After decades of being treated like the back door, we must improve the image border crossers see when entering San Ysidro, we need to improve the safety of pedestrians crossing into San Ysidro — whether getting to their destination or entering our public transit system — and we need to more warmly welcome those visitors who enrich our lives, our region and, yes, our economy.
The timing for our recovery plan seems to be perfect. The San Diego Association of Governments recently added “social equity” to its mission and the county of San Diego just approved a social equity fund. “Social equity” seems to be on everyone’s agenda. The problem is, historically, “social equity” dollars rarely, if ever, made it south of State Route 94.
We are very thankful this holiday season for the unwavering support and advocacy from our local elected officials toward lifting border restrictions. We pray to be equally thankful next holiday season for their financial and political support of our 2021-2022 San Ysidro Recovery Plan.