Mexico to Implement New Rules at Border

The Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing.

Mexico News Daily reports, "Mexico will move forward with plans to fundamentally change its border operations, an official has confirmed, leaving many concerned that slower border crossings into the country could dissuade travelers, workers and family members from entering the country from the United States."

Rodulfo Figueroa, Mexico’s top immigration official in Baja California, confirmed that Mexico is moving forward to implement a 2012 law requiring travel documents and fees from some visitors in order to enter Mexico, a vast difference from the no-questions-asked approach of today.

“We are going to do everything possible to ensure that there are no obstacles,” Figueroa told reporters at the offices of the Tijuana Tourism and Conventions Committee. “We’re going to start applying the law gradually. We know there is going to be a learning period, we won’t be inflexible in applying the law, but certainly we’ll try to educate the public.”

Baja California businesses and politicians have protested the law, claiming it will hurt tourism and businesses, and the Baja California economy. The protests started in November 2014 when Mexico tried to implement it for the first time.

Activists blocked authorities’ first attempt to implement the law at the Otay Mesa border crossing east of San Diego.
Under the new measures, visitors staying in Mexico for more than seven days, or those working in Mexico, will pay a 332-peso (US $20) fee.
Enforcement will increase with a new pedestrian inspection station at San Ysidro, set to open in the coming weeks, according to Figueroa. Head of the Business Coordinating Committee, Humberto Jaramillo, told the San Diego Union Tribune he was not concerned.

“I don’t think there will be an effect, and if there were, we’d be the first to approach authorities,” he said. Others worry the measure will dampen tourism already hurt by negative press about narco-violence. Officials anonymously told the press last year the move was a matter of national security.

“This is more of a security measure,” a Mexican customs agent told El Mexicano. “It’s like saying to visitors: ‘We don’t want to bother you and we aren’t going to block your passage but we want to know who you are and where you are going.”

Others are concerned about the law.

“The idea that everybody has to carry a passport is totally ridiculous,” said president of SIMNSA Health Plan, Frank Carrillo, which serves U.S. workers in Mexico. “Many patients are Mexicans with permanent resident status in the United States. Most of them have g reen cards; do they have to carry their Mexican passport as well? It’s totally inconvenient.”
It appears the president of the Tourism and Conventions Committee, Miguel Angel Badiola, called Tuesday’s press conference in the wake of Matthew Suárez’s San Diego Reader article, entitled, “Welcome to Mexico, $22.50 please.”

In that report, Suárez gives a first-hand account of Mexican nationals encountering a new effort to establish the program.

“They stopped us because we used the ramp to get through the building that leads to the Mexican side,” Michael Acuña told Suárez. “They asked us for visas and passports, but when my wife showed him her resident card, he still asked her for her passport book, all in English. He asked us where we were going and how long we were going to stay in Mexico.

“Funny thing is, he never stopped speaking in English, even when he saw my wife’s Mexican passport. After we showed all the proper documentation, they let us through.”

Sources: San Diego Union Tribune (en), San Diego Reader (en)