“If I had the option to live here in the U.S. or live in this experience, I would prefer to live this experience because my career goals are about the Latina community.”
SAN DIEGO -- How far are you willing to travel for your education?
For many San Diego State students, traveling across the border is a regular part of their everyday lives.
With over 110,000 daily commuters crossing by foot and by car between Tijuana and San Diego, the international southern border is one of the most active in the world, where approximately over 10,000 students cross the border to attend schools in San Diego, according to the 2020 statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“Historically, teaching at San Diego State and teaching classes in Latin American studies and Mexican politics, I get a lot of transborder students who commuted from Tijuana,” Latin American Studies Professor David Carruthers said. “Many of them driving their own cars, a lot of them making this trip by trolley. The border produces inequalities, and stigma, and privilege, and different images of what Tijuana is like as a place… ”
In the fall of 2021 semester, 29 international students applied to attend SDSU with a home address with a residence code from Mexico, according to SDSU student enrollment. In 2020, 24 students applied with a Mexico residence code compared to 2019 which had 36 student applicants and 2018 had 40.
Journalism third year Chanel Yoguez said she has lived in Tijuana her whole life and crosses the border six days a week to attend classes at SDSU or go to her jobs at the YMCA and Bath and Body Works in Las Americas Plaza, located directly by the San Ysidro port entry.
From Tijuana, there are two ports of entries: the San Ysidro one and the Otay Mesa one. Yoguez typically crosses through the San Ysidro port entry, though the two are only about six minutes away from each other.
“I like to enjoy both cultures and a lot of my friends have the same lifestyle as me,” Yoguez said. “We’re used to crossing for so many reasons besides school and work.”
Yogues is one among hundreds of thousands of students at colleges and universities in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas who cross the southern border for their education, according to the Hechinger Report.
Many students continue living in Mexico because it’s cheaper, while others move close to the border to continue their academic careers and lives in the U.S. after their parents were deported, further research from the Hechinger Report states.
Many people travel across the border by foot and the amount of people have increased since the border reopened to all fully-vaccinated individuals on Nov. 8.
Since the border reopened, wait times have increased for drivers crossing.
The San Ysidro Land Port of Entry West Pedestrian Facility is currently still closed.
Researchers on border education have documented that U.S. schools perceive transfronterizo students, or border commuters, as outsiders. These students aren’t often equally valued when compared with non-commuter students and are viewed as not having high academic abilities or leadership potential, according to the Global Perspectives in Education Magazine, published by the National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE).
“I consider myself a transfronterizo scholar,” Dr. Norma Iglesias-Prieto said at a university border book launch panel. “I could not imagine me and my family and my work without both sides. Tijuana plays an important role in understanding the U.S./Mexico border but also the world in a way.”
Iglesias-Prieto has taught in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at SDSU for decades and studies the border extensively.
Latin American Studies graduate student Maximiliano Trujillo said being a transborder student helped teach him the importance of time management, budgeting and other life lessons.
“It taught me to be resilient. It made me more aware of what it means to be an adult at an early age,” Trujillo said about his experience regularly crossing the border. “There’s a lot of ups now that I see it but at the time, there were times where I just wanted to give up. Out of all of my friends who used to cross the border, I’m the only one who could continue with the privilege to gain a higher education.”
Trujillo used to cross the border almost daily from the ages of 10 to 21.
Yoguez also notes some of the challenges she has faced including effective time management, high gas costs and the added stress of not knowing exactly how long it will take to cross the border. However, she wouldn’t trade her experience for a complete U.S. experience.
“If I had the option to live here in the U.S. or live in this experience, I would prefer to live this experience because my career goals are about the Latina community,” Yoguez said. “I feel like this gives me a better understanding of them, especially right here at the border.”
With a Sentri pass or fast pass, cross border travel times are substantially lower. However, without this pass, wait times at the border can take as long as four hours. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it used to take about three to five hours to cross the border by car, according to Management Information System third year Jose Joaquin Valdez Gomez. Gomez said he lives in San Diego now but used to cross all throughout his childhood.
Trujillo said he used to cross the border alone a lot as a middle schooler, and sometimes he felt a stigma around being a crossborder student.
“I had to be very cautious of not telling people,” Trujillo said. “My parents were always like ‘don’t tell people that you live in TJ (Tijuana).’ It kind of makes you feel ashamed or fearful.”
Many of the students who currently cross the border or used to in the past said this commute and lifestyle show how hard people in bordertown communities work.
“I feel like a lot of people don’t know the struggles that immigrants or people who are coming from outside of the country go through,” Gomez said. “It doesn’t look like it because a lot of people are motivated to come here to achieve a goal. We have a purpose. I think we are very strong people. We’re hard workers.”
Credits:
Catlan Nguyen