Migrants working while they wait
They’re relieved to have something that takes them from overcrowded shelter
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 as people with someplace to be.
By sunrise, another crowd has gathered at a corner near the shelter 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’d 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 work in Mexico. It’s something the Mexican authorities have encouraged all the migrants to do in the hopes that jobs will them put down roots rather than crossing the U.S.
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 car wash.
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 help here into 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 only had room that morning for a handful to work at another nearby car wash, but he was sure he 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.
Among those who have taken advantage of work opportunities in the city is Jared Carnales, who walked purposefully through downtown Tijuana’s darkened but still lively streets, his red wind breaker zipped up against the pre-dawn chill, his red baseball cap pulled low.
The 23-year-old from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, didn’t look at the people still chatting loudly around bar entrances or staggering down the sidewalk. Carnales was on his way to work in a Mexican restaurant across town where the specialty was tripe stew. He didn’t know the name of the restaurant’s street or even the neighborhood, but he had memorized the route.
He waited for 10 minutes on a corner outside a 7Eleven for a commuter bus, letting several buses pass in order to save 15 cents before boarding the cheapest one available. Carnales, who drove a bus in Honduras’ capital, said transportation in Tijuana was about twice as expensive.
After a 15-minute ride, Carnales got off in a hillside neighborhood and set off walking. Across the street from the restaurant he knocked on the steel door of another of Tijuana’s many shelters. Arriving a couple days ahead of the caravan, he had spent his first nights there. That was how he found his job at the restaurant.
He took his corner of the began pulling position in a kitchen and tripe from a bin. He dunked them in water, wrung them dry and scraped them on the counter.
Carnales had thought of leaving Honduras for a long time, but the caravan gave him the first opportunity. He said he wanted to make it to the U.S. to work so he could help out his mother and siblings back home, but for now Tijuana was OK.
“There’s work here,” he said. “I’ll spend some time here and then go there.”