Far from home, Haitians build new lives in Tijuana

Sandra Dibble Contact Reporter

For John Arold Lazarre, the plan was to migrate to Miami, to join his aunts, uncles and cousins there. He would build a new life in the United States and send money home to his young son and widowed mother in La Gonâve, Haiti.

Tijuana? That was never his dream.

But now a year after arriving at Mexico’s northern border, the 29-year-old migrant has no plans to move away. “I never want to go anywhere illegally again,” Lazarre said one night last week as he prepared for an overnight shift helping guide airplanes at Tijuana’s A.L.Rodríguez International Airport.

Lazarre is one of more than 3,000 Haitians who are living in Baja California, the result of an unprecedented migratory phenomenon that brought thousands of Haitians to the San Diego border in 2016.

The majority today are quietly integrating into the city, though their presence has hardly gone unnoticed in a country where only a tiny percentage of the population is of African descent.

Across Tijuana, they can be seen pumping gas, peddling fruit, washing cars. They’re working on construction sites, in hotel restaurants, on factory production lines. They’re attending Creole-language church services, eating in the handful of modest Haitian restaurants.

“They are people who are not easily defeated,” said Gustavo Banda, a pastor who is housing some 60 Haitians at Templo Embajadores de Jesus, an evangelical church in Tijuana’s hardscrabble Cañon del Alacran. “I can see that in a very short time, they are learning the language. I think they’re are going to adapt very quickly.”


The Rev. Gustavo Banda, pastor at Templo Embajadores de Jesus, left, greets a Haitian migrant. The church offers housing to more than 60 Haitians. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

At the small Labadee restaurant in downtown Tijuana, Sonia Commandant is hard at work in the open kitchen, presiding over steaming pots of chicken, rice, beans and vegetable stew.

Philocles Julda is on the assembly line at Hyundai’s trailer manufacturing plant in Rosarito Beach. Renant Jean works two jobs—cleaning a house in the well-to-do Agua Caliente neighborhood, then selling candy in the street.

At Plaza del Zapato in the city’s Río Zone, Godneil Chatelain has found work at the trendy Lumi brewery. His cousin, Nickson Pierre, a former medical student, was recently hired as a radiology technician.

The great majority are adult men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, many with wives, children, parents, siblings left behind. They arrived in Tijuana last year, most by way of Brazil , where they had found work following Haiti’s devastating earthquake of January 2010.

But as Brazil’s economy suffered a major downturn, even low-paying jobs became scarce. So many Haitians began leaving for the U.S. border. Traveling for months by bus and foot, they took a dangerous land journey that cost thousands of dollars, presenting themselves at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

By May 2016, their numbers had become notable as hundreds anxiously crowded the busy port. They were typically granted humanitarian parole, a temporary status that allowed them into the United States while an immigration judge considered their petition.

But on Sept. 22, 2016, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security put a halt to the policy, and those Haitians who persisted in seeking admittance instead faced detention and swift deportation to their country. As that reality set in, Haitians like Lazarre who had yet to cross reconsidered their options—and opted to stay in Mexico.

Most now have renewable one-year humanitarian visas—a status granted by the Mexican government that allows them to work, travel abroad and receive medical benefits in Mexico—but not bring in family.

Today, they are scattered in different parts of the city as they find jobs and housing. They are learning Spanish, mastering the complex system of buses and taxis, leading low-key lives, and staying in close touch with family back home.

The initial challenge was ensuring the Haitians had proper identification from their home country—without that, Mexico would not grant them permission to remain. Many had lost their papers, or had them stolen on the journey to Mexico said Guy Lamothe, Haiti’s ambassador to Mexico, who has led efforts to provide these documents.

With the majority now properly identified and able to work in Mexico, Lamothe said the issue now is to ensure they can receive the same benefits as Mexican workers, with entitlements to disability, retirement and housing programs.

Mexican authorities, “have told us that they are doing everything possible so that these people can have permanent status here, so that they can have full benefits,” Lamothe said.

Juana Pérez, Baja California’s labor secretary, said the state government has been urging federal authorities to give those on humanitarian visas “the same labor rights as the rest of Mexican workers.”

Employers in the state “are pleased, these are people with a very good attitude,” Pérez said. With job growth in the state exceeding projections this year, “Haitians are not taking away work from Mexicans, on the contrary, they are coming here to enrich our culture,” she said.

Mexico’s top immigration official in Baja California, Rodulfo Figueroa, said “things are moving forward.” Those who marry Mexicans or have Mexican-born children can qualify to become permanent residents. Others might change their status through job offers. “We assume the situation will evolve,” he said. “If they get Mexican jobs, have Mexican children, we assume they’re going to be assimilated.”

At the upscale Hotel Lucerna, three Haitian employees are now on staff, and their supervisors say they are pleased with their performance. Two are kitchen helpers. The third has been assigned to clean the public areas, and spends his off time studying Spanish and learning on computer skills, said Adriana Alarcon, the chief housekeeper. “He told us he wants to be someone who is prepared,” Alarcon said.


Godneil Chatelain, left, and Nickson Pierre, right, are cousins from Gonaives, Haiti now living and working in Tijuana. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Mexican government figures show that as of last week, more than 2,150 Haitians were enrolled for health benefits in Baja California through the federal social security system, about 80 percent of them in Tijuana. Figures from Baja California civil registry office showed nine weddings and five births involving Haitians so far this year.

The state’s public school system has only two Haitian-born students registered, both in pre-school, one in Tijuana and the other in Mexicali. The system’s records show that five adults have started the paperwork to have their foreign high school studies recognized in order to enroll at the university.

The Universidad Iberoamericana in Tijuana, a private Jesuit-run school, in August admitted its first two two Haitian scholarship students, one studying engineering the other business administration.

Nickson Pierre, 29, lives with his 25-year-old cousin, Godneil Chatelain, in a sparsely furnished apartment on a quiet courtyard in eastern Tijuana.

A native of the city of Gonaives on Haiti’s northwest coast, Pierre had left Haiti after high school to live with his father in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. He had two years of medical school under his belt, but the growing violence and poverty there gave him little hope for the future. In September, he took off for the U.S. border, arriving in Tijuana last Dec. 10 after spending $5000 to get there.

The hardest thing, he said, has been missing family members left behind. “My brothers, my sisters, my mother, in any country without them, I’m going to feel sad,” Pierre said. But back in Haiti, “things are difficult, there is no work.”

Pierre has had no trouble finding work employment adopted city, and for the past month has been working as a radiology technician in a Tijuana imaging center.

His fluent Spanish and musical abilities have opened up other doors as well: He and his cousin have now teamed with the singer-songwriter Ceci Bastida for a video, entitled: Welcome to Tijuana.

“My idea was not to stay here,” Pierre said. “But in life, you should never say never.”

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