Kind World Presents: Port Of Entry

Kind World

WBUR

Kindness, Society & Culture, Profound, Personal Journals, Uplifting, Stories

4.7 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2020

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The perception that the U.S.-Mexico border’s been effectively sealed shut because of the pandemic is wrong. Lots of people are still crossing. Actually, the biggest, most dramatic change in who can’t cross right now; you’re not going to find those folks at the official ports of entry. Instead, you have to look inside migrant shelters, at the refugees who can’t seek asylum in the U.S. right now and are instead stuck in border towns. So that's what we do today. We talk to a migrant stuck at the border in Tijuana, and a doctor from Los Angeles who's trying to help.

About The Show:

“Port Of Entry” is about the unexplored subcultures, creativity and struggles at the U.S.-Mexico border. The KPBS podcast tells personal stories from people whose lives are shaped by the tension reverberating around the wall. This is a show for border babies, urban explorers or those who wonder what happens when two cultures are both separated and intertwined.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone. It's Andrea Aswaje. I'm dropping in to say hello and to thank you for listening to Kind World,
0:06.0	but I also wanted to share an episode of a show we think you'd like. It's called Port of Entry from K-PBS,
0:12.8	and we think you'll really enjoy this episode from them.
0:15.8	If you like the show,
0:16.8	subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:19.2	Take a listen and take care. When the pandemic hit, the federal government did something extreme.
0:30.2	The United States will soon be effectively cut off from the world as the federal government closes the northern and southern borders.
0:35.7	All non-essential traffic is blocked from crossing into the United States at border crossings with Canada and Mexico.
0:42.0	In the beginning it really sounded like the Canadian and Mexican borders were going to be completely shut down to everybody.
0:48.0	I know I was confused, my friends were confused, people that I talked to were confused, so people just stayed at home and decided
0:54.3	to not cross.
0:55.3	Me and my brother normally live in Tijuana, but without knowing how long this was going to last,
0:59.6	we just decided to quarantine in San Diego with our family and wait it out.
1:04.0	For the first few weeks, all the friends that I talked to who weren't Tijuana weren't crossing because
1:08.0	they didn't know that they could get through.
1:09.8	After a few weeks, people decided to start rolling the dice and just try to cross.
1:14.8	And pretty soon, I think we all realize that the border was open and people could cross just as easily as before, at least if you're a U.S. citizen or resident.
1:25.0	And a few weeks after that, the border was almost back to normal.
1:28.0	The lines were just as long as ever.
1:30.0	The only real difference was that border vendors were now selling a lot of face masks, hand sanitizer, and all the Corona goods you could imagine, toilet paper, all that kind of stuff.
1:41.0	And by April, the slumbering border beast had awakened.
1:47.0	People like me with dual citizenship, we can cross the border whenever we want, even with COVID in full swing.
	...

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