Business // Economy

Stopped at U.S. border, Haitians find 'Mexican dream' instead


They are among several thousand Haitians who came to Mexico's northwest corner hoping to cross the border before the U.S. abruptly closed its doors last year. The Mexican government has welcomed them with visas that help them fill the need for labor in Tijuana's growing economy.

In a country whose population is 1 percent black, Tijuana's Haitians stand out. They share tight living quarters, sending much of their meager wages to support family in Haiti. Haitians earn far less than they would in the U.S. but enough to forsake the risk of getting deported by heading north.

Two new Haitian restaurants downtown serve dishes with mangoes and mashed plantains. Dozens of Haitian children attend public schools. Factories that export to the U.S. recruit Haitians, who can also be found waiting tables and worshipping at congregations that added services in Creole.

"It's the Mexican dream for many of them, a sense that they belong," Millan said. "Mexico has given them opportunity. Mexico has opened up and let them achieve their dreams."

Haitians, he added, "fight hard, fight strong, and they don't stop."

The Haitians took an accidental route from their impoverished Caribbean homeland to Tijuana, a city of 2 million that borders San Diego and also has large pockets of Chinese and Korean immigrants.

Brazil and its neighbors took in Haitians after that country's 2010 earthquake. As construction jobs for the 2016 Summer Olympics ended and Brazil descended into political turmoil, they crossed 10 countries by plane, boat, bus and on foot to San Diego, where U.S. authorities let them in on humanitarian grounds.

Then President Barack Obama shifted course in September and started deporting Haitian arrivals. Many decided to call Mexico home.

After struggling as a schoolteacher in Haiti, Abelson Etienne moved to Brazil in 2014 to work at a factory that made cable for lighting products. He arrived in Tijuana in December after a harrowing journey with his wife who, despite the U.S. policy shift, was allowed in on humanitarian grounds, presumably because she was seven months' pregnant.

Etienne, a 27-year-old who studied chemistry in college in Haiti, settled into a routine of six-day weeks and three double shifts, earning him 1,900 pesos (a little over $100), mostly for his wife in New York City and the infant son he hasn't seen. On Sundays, he sleeps until the afternoon and goes to church.

"There's so much work in Tijuana," he said while a pot of fish stew with mangoes and tomatoes simmered on an electric burner in the two-room apartment that he rents with three other Haitians. "I've been treated very well in Mexico."

Like its neighbor to the north and many other places in Latin America, Mexico has a complicated history with race. Mexico's elites tend to be white-skinned, and black people are sometimes casually demeaned.

The Mexican government is giving Haitians one-year, renewable visas that allow them to work but not bring family.

The new arrivals, currently numbering around 3,000, are manageable in a country of 122 million. Central Americans, who come illegally in much larger numbers, are typically deported, although Mexico is granting asylum more often.

Rodin St. Surin, 36, is among hundreds of Haitians who found work at Tijuana's export-oriented factories. CCL Industries, a Toronto-based company that makes Avery office products for retailers including Staples, Wal-Mart, and Target, needed help after moving manufacturing from Meridian, Miss., last year.

Plant managers overcame language barriers by having St. Surin translate their directives to Creole. Some Haitians have quickly learned Spanish in Tijuana.

The factory offered 1,500 pesos (about $85) for a six-day week, with health coverage, paid vacation and a free shuttle to work. St. Surin, who left Brazil with hopes of joining a cousin in Miami, sends earnings to a caretaker for his three children in Haiti, whom he hopes to bring to Tijuana.

"Mexico could become my home," he said outside a crowded, graffiti-covered building where a nun allows about 50 Haitians to live rent-free on a street shared by cars and stray dogs. They tap a neighbor's hose for water to bathe, and cook meals on a campfire under a large canopy.