by Katia Lopez-Hodoyan
It’s barely noticeable that Noida is four months pregnant. The only clue is that every now and then she starts rubbing her belly over her black stretchy pants. She doesn’t know is she is having a boy or a girl. In fact, she doesn’t even know what country her baby will be born in. Noida is a refugee from Haiti. For the last month, she has been living in a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. The sounds and smells of the busy border city are becoming familiar, but she doesn’t want to get too comfortable, because Tijuana is not her final destination.
“I’m hoping to make it to the United States,” says the 25 year old as she sits in a blue plastic chair. “I went through Brazil, Peru, Nicaragua and Guatemala to get to Mexico. Making it to the U.S. could be the hardest part.”
Noida says the 7,000 mile journey took her three months and cost her more than $2,500. She left her native Haiti with her husband years ago, when the piercing poverty became unbearable. The devastating 2010 earthquake made things even worse. They headed to Brazil where they did odd jobs to make ends meet. There was plenty of work leading up to the Olympics, but eventually things slowed down. The only way to survive, they decided, was to head north and seek asylum.
“Going back to Haiti would be a death sentence,” says Noida as she brushes her flip flops against the dusty ground. “There are no jobs there and there’s no way to survive.”
Noida is not alone. Since the month of May, a wave of over 8,000 foreign children, women and men have made their way to the U.S/Mexico border. Most are from Haiti, but not all. Refugees are coming in from 19 countries which span from Africa to the Middle East and Latin America.
“We’ve had people from the Congo, Armenia, Syria, Honduras and Guatemala,” says Sarah Garcia, a volunteer at Tijuana’s Padre Chava soup kitchen, where hundreds of refugees are staying. “They’re all from different places, but they face similar circumstances.”
Shelters known for accommodating deportees are now filled with refugees from Africa. With limited room, some are forced to sleep out on the street. Their goal is clear: They’re seeking political asylum in the U.S under the hopes of landing a steady job. The process though is far from simple.
The refugees are usually screened by Border Patrol. Once their paperwork is processed, they are turned over to U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement. To qualify for political asylum, refugees require documentation and first-hand testimony of life threatening circumstances, including poverty, torture, threats, persecution, war or extreme violence. Those who don’t fulfill the requirements face deportation.
Noida understands there’s the possibility of deportation, but she says she owes it to her unborn baby to seek a better life. While she and her husband wait for their immigration appointment, she sleeps in a shared makeshift plywood structure next to other women and children. They are mostly strangers, but ironically they have become part of her impromptu family. They have different stories, but similar hopes. Her husband also lives in the shelter, but he sleeps in an area designated for men.
The United Nations is well aware of the dramatic rise of refugees. Even though most of the world’s attention is focused on the displaced from Iraq and Syria, there’s an underlying phenomenon taking place around the globe: people are leaving their native countries, venturing off towards the unknown for a chance at survival.
On September 20, La Prensa San Diego attended the UN’s General Assembly meeting in New York City, where the plight of refugees took center stage. Addressing more than 150 of his political counterparts, President Barack Obama touched on the issue by highlighting how extreme poverty is often linked to political instability, war, and massive migration.
In fact, the high level meeting was also a way to officially introduce the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, where governments and communities are called to protect the environment, promote education, end poverty, and war by the year 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals are also about preventing the devastating chain of events these issues can trigger when they are overlooked or just ignored.
“We can only eliminate extreme poverty if the Sustainable Development Goals that we have set are more than words on paper,” said U.S. President Barack Obama during a 48 minute speech. “I believe that at this moment we all face a choice. We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration. Or we can retreat into a world sharply divided, and ultimately in conflict, along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion.”
Refugees probably found his words comforting. Yet the very next day, a wave of Haitian refugees were denied entry at the San Ysidro point of entry in San Diego. Some refugees have been vetted and allowed in. The cities of El Cajon and National City have installed new shelters to accommodate the refugees as they settle into life in the U.S.
At the Padre Chava soup kitchen in Tijuana, Ramona Godoy, a local volunteer, says several Haitians have asked her if she knows someone in the U.S who can sponsor or vouch for them. As their unpredictable future approaches, they’re hoping to add weight to their legal documents before they meet with immigration officials.
“Several have asked me for contacts in the U.S.,” says Godoy as she cradles a baby refugee in her arms. “I can’t help them. It’s interesting because I do know people living in San Diego, but they are undocumented, so I can’t put their name out there. Legally, they don’t exist.”
As days pass, it becomes clear that unpredictability is the common denominator in the shelter. Locals have donated boxes of food, clothes, blankets and most importantly time to help the refugees. For now they have a place to stay, what they don’t have is a clear future.
“One of the refugees has been waiting here in Tijuana months now,” adds Godoy. “He’s beginning to understand that he probably won’t be allowed into the U.S. He has already asked me about wages and living conditions in Mexico. He’s willing to stay here, he just doesn’t want to go back to his country. It’s a story I keep on hearing over and over again.”