The Border Is A Weird Place

With all of the talk about the US-Mexico border and Trump's wall proposal, I thought I would share my impressions of the border from when I lived in San Diego (from 1984 to 1992).  During that time the farthest I lived from the border was about 30 miles, and I worked in downtown San Diego, which is about 15 miles from the border. (And you can see Mexico easily.) I moved to San Diego as an adult; I had not grown up there, so it was new(ish) to me after living in Northern California.

Here are some of the things I noticed, by category:

Mexicans in California
When I first arrived in San Diego, I got a job in a camera store downtown. I was surprised when middle class and wealthy Mexicans (from Mexico, not Mexican-Americans) would come in to buy camera equipment. I think I had the idea that Mexicans weren't allowed in the US - that there was a fence or wall or something, and they weren't allowed in. But here were people from Tijuana and Guadalajara and elsewhere in Mexico just walking in and buying expensive camera equipment.

I asked one of my co-workers why they came here to shop, and he said that he thought the prices were better in San Diego due to import duties in Mexico, and that we might have a better selection. I later found out that a lot of the higher-end stores in San Diego actually depended heavily on Mexican customers, and that was built into their business plans.

And there were Mexican cars driving around - you could tell by the license plates (and sometimes they were different models than sold in the US).  After awhile I got so I recognized the more common Mexican state plates.  It makes sense, though - if you live in Baja California and are taking a trip to California, it is a short drive and you have a car to get around.  So they would just drive across the border at the San Ysidro border crossing.

Later on, when I was living by myself, I hired a cleaning person who was recommended by a friend. The cleaning person lived in Tijuana, and she would come across the border in the morning, clean houses in San Diego, and then go home to Tijuana at night. I figured out you didn't have to be a rich Mexican to get into the US.

Californians in Mexico
When you live in San Diego, Mexico is very close, and when I was there you didn't need a passport to go there and come back - your US driver's license was good enough to get back in to the US.

You want to drive there? Your US car insurance isn't good in Mexico, so you need Mexican insurance, but that is easy - near the border there were multiple drive-thru Mexican insurance booths. You would drive up, pay some money, fill out a short form, and you had a Mexican insurance policy. You don't want to drive in Mexico? No problem, the trolley (light rail) runs to the border, so you can take that to the border and then walk across.

People would regularly go to Tijuana for a day trip - go down, watch some jai alai or greyhound racing, eat some really good and inexpensive Mexican food, buy some inexpensive beer or Kahlua to bring back (at that time each person could bring back one six pack of beer or one bottle of Kahlua, so it was good to travel with at least one non-drinker) and come home. I did that a number of times, and I rode the 50-mile Rosarito-to-Ensenada bike ride down the coast of Baja that draws hundreds (thousands?) of American riders and their support crews. (You want someone to drive a van or truck down to Ensenada, so you don't have to ride back, too.)

Over the time I was in San Diego I met people who retired in Mexico (usually because it was cheaper), and one American who lived there and commuted to his job in the US every day.

Crime by Mexicans in California
I don't recall this being a big issue, other than people's cars (especially those with big trunks) being stolen to transport undocumented immigrants across the border.  I heard a story that a guy parked his car at the trolley station in the morning, came back in the evening and found his car in a different spot with no gas in the tank and footprints on the sides of the trunk. And the Mexican police got busted for driving SUVs that had been stolen in the US.

As a prosecutor for the City of San Diego, if I wasn't in court, I was issuing cases, which means reading police arrest reports to figure out if you should prosecute or not.  Our office reviewed every misdemeanor arrest in the City of San Diego (which is a big city). I read a lot of police reports, and I spent a lot of time in arraignment courts.  I wasn't paying particularly close attention to the ethnicity or citizenship of the defendants in the police reports or arraignment courts, but I didn't notice that there was a disproportionate number of Mexicans being arrested. (The one thing I did notice was that for some reason Fish & Game would have everyone they arrested show up on one day, and on Fish & Game days the arraignment court looked 3/4 Vietnamese).

And an Airport
When I was in San Diego, public officials were constantly trying to figure out how to expand airport capacity, as the existing airport was too small and hard to expand.  Various ideas were floated but none came to fruition.  Long after I left, they came up with a way to use the capacity of the Tijuana airport - a terminal on the US side, with a bridge over the border to the Tijuana airport, called the "Cross Border Xpress."

While I am sure much has changed since I lived in San Diego, my first-hand experience has colored my impression of the US/Mexico border, and the major thing I took away from my experience (and that I doubt has changed) is that the border is not a simple place.