Los Invisibles: Nuances of Migration Along Mexico's Southern Border
Part 1 in a Series
TAPACHULA, MEXICO – It is 8:30 a.m., a half hour before the local migratory regulation office of the National Institute of Migration, Mexico’s federal migration authority, opens for business. Nora Rodríguez, 40, begins her day just outside the office’s front door on the outskirts of Tapachula, a city in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
There, Rodríguez, a native of Honduras, sets up a custom-made desk, places her laptop on it, puts a printer on a chair, arranges plastic chairs around the desk, and, finally, opens a beach umbrella to protect herself from the sun.
“It is my office,” she says, as a wry smile spreads across her round face.
Rodríguez assists Central American immigrants who are looking to file paperwork for legal residency in Mexico from her improvised office. She helps them to fill out forms and to write the letters the immigration office requires.
As Rodríguez sits at her desk, her small figure disappears for moments among the people surrounding her. With eight years of experience, she is able to deftly inspect documents and fill out forms while simultaneously attending to those who gather to ask her which documents they need and where they can process them.
The immigration office only gives applicants a list of required documents but does not advise them how to fulfill the requirements, say Gregoria Morales and Jorge Rojas, who were submitting paperwork at the office and who have also sought help from Rodríguez. Many of the workers at the immigration office also neglect to tell the immigrants that they can get an exemption from the processing fees if they can demonstrate economic need, Rodríguez says.
Completing the application process is difficult for some people, such as those who may not know how to read or write, much less use a computer, Rodríguez says. Simply finding the necessary documents and forms can be a problem for some.
Others come to Rodríguez for a sympathetic ear. They complain about going in vain once again to the immigration office, where documents were still not ready, or they tell her the office denied them resident status or they could not pay the processing fee.
An immigrant herself, Rodríguez understands the vicissitudes that other immigrants face in Tapachula. The city sees intense migration activity with its location by the country’s border with Guatemala, both among those who stay there and those who are passing through to the north, according to a 2013 report on migration along Mexican’s southern border by the National Institute of Migration and other governmental and educational organizations.
Rodríguez, who has lived in Mexico since 2000, says her experiences have shown her that Central American immigrants in Tapachula suffer more adversity than other immigrants since they tend to be poorer and face discrimination.
Central American immigrants are also the most numerous. Of the 6,074 immigrants residing legally in Chiapas, 83 percent are Central American, mainly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to the National Institute of Migration.
Rodríguez extends her services to all immigrants, regardless of nationality, she says. Most of her clients have been from Central America.
Rodríguez left her home country 13 years ago because she did not earn enough to provide for her three children painting houses and removing grit at construction sites. Her plan was to get to the U.S. to find a job and to send money to her children back in Honduras.
But bandits assaulted Rodríguez when she crossed the border between Guatemala and Mexico and left her without money to continue the journey, she says. She sought help from the police, who brought her to a center offering services for people in vulnerable situations.
Rodríguez later found work as a domestic worker for a Mexican woman. But the working conditions were so difficult that she says she felt enslaved. She spent the next five years as a domestic worker in various homes. As time passed and she learned more about the risks migrants faced as they crossed Mexico, she abandoned her plans to go the U.S.
“I was hearing about rapes, that they killed [people],” she says in the melodious Honduran accent she still retains, “and all that – the fear and the love for my family – I felt that I had my family nearby, that it is better I stayed here.”
At the same time, she was learning hard truths about the lives of her fellow Central Americans in Tapachula, including the fact that the people who purported to help immigrants to fill out their immigration paperwork often took advantage of them instead. Rodríguez paid the person who helped with her transaction an inflated sum of 50 Mexican pesos ($3.80) per sheet when she was becoming a legal resident.
Her experience motivated her to offer similar immigration services at a lower cost. She started out using a typewriter and charging 5 pesos (38 cents) per page.
Now, some forms are electronic, which means Rodríguez has to pay for a portable Internet connection. She also pays owners of a nearby food stand who let her power her computer and printer from their electricity.
Rodríguez had to raise her prices accordingly and now charges 30 pesos ($2.25) for each electronic form and between 10 pesos (75 cents) and 15 pesos ($1.15) per page to write and print official letters. Her advice remains free.
The difference between Rodríguez’s work and that of the National Institute of Migration is that the institute only assists immigrants once they bring in the necessary paperwork, Rodríguez, Morales and Rojas say. In contrast, Rodríguez assists clients from the beginning and guides them to obtain the necessary paperwork that the institute requires.
Claudia Gutiérrez Romero, temporary head of the Office of Migratory Regulation of the Southern Area Federal Subdelegation, the local branch of the National Institute of Migration alongside which Rodríguez has erected her office, says in a telephone interview that the employees who assist immigrants do advise them on the forms they need to submit and the requirements they need to fulfill. They do not help them to fill out or edit the forms because this is the responsibility of the immigrants and they have to do this externally.
Employees do not inform all immigrants about the possibility of fee exemptions because their obligation is to pay for the processing of their paperwork, Gutiérrez says. Once immigrants present their documentation, employees review their cases to determine whether their economic situations merit an exemption.
Rodríguez sees her work as a way to help other foreigners to receive more guidance.
“I try to give them a bit of time and to explain things a bit more to them,” she says, “and also to console them and to tell them, ‘Yes, you can do it, but you have to have a bit of calm.’”
One of Rodríguez’s clients is Luisa Amilta Guevara, 42, a Honduran woman who came to Mexico eight years ago and is now in the process of getting permanent residency. Rodríguez provides important assistance to the immigrant community, Guevara says.
“We feel well-supported by a person who guides us,” Guevara says. “Because the truth [is], there are almost no people who really help the migrant.”
Rodríguez says that locating her office just outside the immigration office on the outskirts of Tapachula is an additional way to help migrants. This spares migrants the effort of traveling 20 minutes to the center of the city and looking for someone else to do the same service – and often at a higher price.
Rodríguez charges between 45 pesos ($3.40) and 50 pesos ($3.80) for the basic services, which include filling out forms online and printing them, she says. She charges more if the client needs her to print and complete additional documents.
By contrast, other operations in the center of Tapachula charge between 150 pesos ($11.40) and 200 pesos ($15.20) per transaction to help with immigration paperwork, Rodríguez says.
Diego Lorente Pérez de Eulate, director of the Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matías de Córdova, a human rights center in Tapachula dedicated to defending the rights of migrants in southern Mexico, has become familiar with Rodríguez’s work because they serve the same population. He views her work favorably.
Even though Rodríguez benefits economically from the services she offers, she also provides help and guidance to immigrants that they do not get anywhere else, he says. That Rodríguez is herself an immigrant benefits her work, since she has confronted firsthand the problems Central American immigrants face.
In 2012, Rodríguez expanded her work of supporting immigrants beyond helping with paperwork. Since June 2012, Rodríguez has organized four marches demanding the government reduce the fees for immigration documents.
The government sharply increased the costs of these transactions in December 2011. The temporary residence fee was 2,800 pesos ($215) in 2009, according to a fee schedule published in the Mexican government’s main official daily publication, the Diario Oficial de la Federación. The government increased the fee to 4,130 pesos ($315) in 2011 for a one-year stay in Mexico, set higher fees for longer stays and included a processing fee. The permanent residence fee rose from 4,306 pesos ($330) to 4,815 pesos ($370).
The fee increase has kept many migrants from legalizing their immigration status, Rodríguez says.
Rodríguez’s efforts on behalf of her community go beyond marches and paperwork. She and nine other Central Americans formed an organization in February 2013 called Comunidad Centroamericana, which means Central American Community in Spanish.
Its goal is to create support networks among people from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua who live in Tapachula. The organization focuses on these nationalities because they are the primary Central American groups in Tapachula, Rodríguez says.
Lorente says that although Rodríguez’s activism is still in its early stages, she has gone from simply providing a support service to demanding change regarding the “unjust and discriminatory” situations that she and the people she helps have suffered during the migratory process.
The fact that the Central American community is organizing itself is also an important step, Lorente says.
“It is what has been missing until now – that migrants have their own voice and are the protagonists of their own demands,” he says.
Rodríguez says some of her compatriots have asked whether she feels afraid to protest in the streets. She tells them it is the only way to make the problems immigrants face known.
“If you do not go out and expose your problem,” she says, “nobody is going to know that you are in need.”
Although the struggles of migration have frequented the media, coverage has been shallow about the diverse issues that Central American migrants who enter Mexico illegally face as they try to settle in the country or travel north. Mayela Sánchez, senior reporter for GPJ's Mexico News Desk, spent one month along Mexico's southern border delving into the nuances of employment, health, violence, gender justice and various human rights issues that push people to migrate and confront them along their journeys. GPJ will feature this series on the first Wednesday of October, November and December.
This article was translated from Spanish.
