Crossing the Border

When you're living south of the border, one of the things you learn to deal with is the border itself. I cross the border pretty frequently -- usually about once a week or so. And I get a lot of questions about this, so let me explain how it works.

When I want to cross the border, I don't go hop a fence or anything. I cross at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing station, which is about 10 minutes away from my apartment here in Tijuana.

Getting from the United States into Tijuana is pretty easy. If you want to cross by car, you take Interstate 5 all the way to its southern terminus, at the Mexican border. You get all sorts of signs on the road, like "International Border / Frontera Internacional", with the distances both in miles and kilometers (since we're metric here in Mexico). Then, as long as you have nothing to declare, you get into the proper lane, go through a set of booths like a toll plaza, and you're in. If a little red light flashes going through the booths, you have to pull over and get asked a couple questions, but otherwise you don't even have to stop. I-5 turns into Mexican Highway 1, which I believe takes you all the way to Cabo at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. And yes, there is a yellow line on the road at the actual border line.

Crossing on foot is a little more interesting. San Diego's trolley has a Blue Line which takes you directly to the border. The station is named "San Ysidro / Tijuana", and it's the end of the line, so it's hard to miss. Once you're out of the trolley, you simply walk to the entrance of the border crossing station. Once you're in, you walk up a series of ramps to a bridge that crosses the street. You cross the bridge, go down another series of ramps, and make a right, and walk through a set of turnstiles. These turnstiles are noisy. You hear them clacking as soon as you cross the bridge. Anyway, once you're through them, the line is right there -- complete with a marker that denotes the limit of Mexico and the limit of the United States.

Incidentally, once you cross that line, there's a little gate off to the side. Sometimes, you'll see a bus parked outside the gate, dropping off people deported from the United States.

And that's it. Once you cross that line, you're in Mexico. Simple as that. You needn't have identification, or anything at all.

It's not so simple to cross back into the United States. You need two things: identification, and lots of time on your hands. Like coming into Mexico, you can cross either by car or on foot, although it's usually faster to cross on foot. If you're crossing by car, you follow the signs for San Diego, and then get in line. The huge traffic jam is pretty hard to miss. Likewise, walking, you follow the signs for the USA, and get in line.

Once you're in line, you wait. And wait. And wait some more. Usually there are street vendors selling all sorts of weird stuff, from bottled water to churros to huge ceramic turtles. Yes, huge ceramic turtles -- there is evidently a demand for them among people crossing the border. On an average day, you'll wait an hour or so, maybe an hour and a half. My fastest crossing time so far was a Monday morning in the foot line -- I got through in under 5 minutes. My slowest time was on a Sunday night in the car line, when it took four and a half hours, and that was unpleasant.

Once you get to the front of the car line (there are usually 10 or so lanes open) you show your passports or identification to the officer. You sometimes get asked questions, but I've only gotten asked anything once. Usually they'll just look at your passport and be like, OK, go ahead. The walking line is pretty much the same deal -- you get to the front, choose a line, and show your ID. Then you're in.

You can get in with a number of forms of identification. Driver's license, passport, birth certificate -- for now. In next January, supposedly they're going to make you use your passport. But whether that'll actually happen or not -- it's already been pushed back, due to the huge passport demand -- remains to be seen.

Really, after waiting so much time, it's pretty anticlimactic when you get to the front of the line and the guy looks at your passport and says, OK, you can go. Border wait times have been longer too, more recently, because of heightened terror alerts -- ironic, considering the 9/11 attackers got in legally. But that's pretty much what you have to do. The return trip isn't nearly as scenic as the trip in. There is a marker and line on the Mexico side leading back into the United States, but it's been crossed so often that the line is worn away, and it's easy to miss.

But, in a nutshell, that's how it works. Bottom line: easy getting into Mexico, hard getting into the United States.