Although most students who live in Mexico are within 12-30 miles of the Chula Vista campus, they may as well live in Arizona.
Literally, Arizona.
Traveling via public transportation from central Tijuana to SWC routinely takes three hours. Four is not unheard of. Five happens. Astonishingly, it is often quicker and easier to get to Chula Vista from Palm Springs, Bakersfield, Oxnard, El Centro or Yuma, Arizona than the “Gateway to Mexico.”
College students who live in Mexico are to a surprisingly high degree not Mexican. Legions of American citizens live in Mexico for the affordable housing and much lower cost of living. Tijuana is an action-packed city that skews young and holds an edgy romanticism for many.
Mexico-based students expect no quarter and receive none. They have to follow the same rules as students who live in el norte. SWC policies that allow instructors to drop a student after three tardies or if hours of unexcused absences exceed the number of hours the class meets per week apply to everyone. With the pressure to be on time students who live in Mexico wake before the rooster can sing its first morning tune.
Victor Salazar, a former SWC student, said he awoke at 4:30 a.m. to get to his 9:30 a.m. class. La frontera can be a tough line to cross. Even early risers do not always make it. Hundreds of things can tie up the border from 9/11 to narcotraficantes to Señora Rosales trying to sneak birria de chivo across for a quinceañera.
SWC student Alma Alcazar battled lines at the San Ysidro border for three years and has been forced to drop early morning classes due to excessive tardiness or absences. She said wait times go from one extreme to another. Alcazar said she leaves home four hours prior to her 9 a.m. class and still does not always make it on time. Classes at 8 a.m. are no longer an option for her, she said.
This spring police officers from the Mexican side of the border took matters into their own hands and created a student line. Three- and four-hour waits for students plunged to 30 minutes. Unfortunately, non-students complained and the line was discontinued after two months. Camelot ended too soon.
This fall the San Ysidro crossing established a ready lane for pedestrians. It is a mixed bag that does not always work.
Customs and Border Protection Officers must process 25,000 pedestrians and 50,000 vehicles every day. Speeding students along does not seem to be a priority.
Custom officers randomly ask pedestrians how long their wait time was, but the purpose of this question is irrelevant as long as nothing is being done. If there is no solution to the problem, then why pretend to be interested by asking their wait time?
Wait times have gone from a brutal three hours to 30 minutes for most ready lane users who pay a $50 annual fee, but the border is still volatile and unpredictable. Ready lanes in San Ysidro are not much of a solution. They are like Tylenol for a headache but not a cure for migraines.
Patience is a virtue, but making students wait in general public lines for hours is insane. Finding a solution for the wait time problem seems to be harder than finding a parking spot on campus the first day of school.
Mexico and the United States need to work together to use modern technology to accelerate the inspection process. Student lines should be restored. Wait times for students need to come down – way down. Same for lines for honest workers.
Students can spend between 250-300 hours each semester waiting in border lines. That is time better spent studying, working, serving an internship or – God forbid! – sleeping.