A Haitian migrant shares his journey to Tijuana via Brazil and how he’s found relative success by running his own business.
Constant earned a comfortable living driving a public transport vehicle and teaching high school math at home in Haiti. He was forced to flee after his father was killed and headed first to Brazil. After an economic downturn in Brazil, he and his wife took a shot at getting into the US and are now waiting in Mexico for a better time to cross the border. While his dreams feel stunted in Mexico, he has found dignity in running his own business. “Right now, I work for myself. My educational and professional level [doesn’t] give me room to work for other people. I’m not going to work [at a factory] for only $60 a week and be disrespected.”
My name is Constant, and when I was in Haiti, I drove public transportation [tap-taps]. I was also a high school mathematics teacher and taught for two hours a day and then drove my vehicle. With those two jobs, I made $420 a month. I left Haiti because it wasn’t good for me. My father was a judge who got arrested and killed. That’s why I left. He died in April 2014. He was in a political party and after he was killed, people started coming after our entire family. They even managed to kill an uncle of mine. They broke into his house, killed him, and then burned his body. I had to leave Haiti.
I saved money from the work I was doing, and I was still living with my parents at the time, so that allowed me to save even more. From Haiti, I flew to Brazil. I went first. At the time, my wife was studying nursing in the Dominican Republic, and after she got her degree, her parents bought her a ticket to Brazil to join me. I spent three years in Brazil and we both worked. I did the same thing I’m doing in Mexico now, selling clothing. I would make more than $2,000 a month. My wife and I decided to leave Brazil because of the economic downturn. So many people had left that I could no longer sell anything. I had no one to sell to. When I left Brazil, I went to Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, then Tapachula in Mexico. When I got to Tapachula, my wife and I spent a month there before getting our transit papers to leave the city. When we got to Tijuana, we found that Haitians entering the U.S. were being deported and the authorities encouraged us to stay in Mexico. We’re still here.
Once I got here, I couldn’t work as a teacher. We’re looked down on here as well because of our migrant status. When I presented my degree and all my certifications, I was told I would have to go back to university and retake courses to qualify to teach here. I have a family to support, and going back to school wasn’t an option for me. Right now, I work for myself. My educational and professional level [doesn’t] give me room to work for other people. I’m not going to work [at a factory] for only $60 a week and be disrespected. When I work for myself, I make double that amount per day. I own a clothing shop and sell shoes. I also have a restaurant.
When I first got to Mexico, I worked at a factory. I was smarter than some of the people I worked with, but they didn’t value or respect me. I worked in a factory where I made airplane parts and quit after about ten months. They paid me $60 to $65 a week, and if you calculate that per month, it’s $268. When I left the factory, I opened my business using my own funds. I used the money that I had saved from the job and money that I brought with me from Brazil. I had brought $3,000 with me and when I converted it, I got 59,138 pesos. With that money, I rented a retail space for $500 and had to put down a $500 deposit. In total, between the first month’s rent and the deposit, the space cost me $1,000. Then I bought merchandise to put inside the shop. Sometimes I get the merchandise from California and other times I get it from Haiti.
I have family living in the United States who buy the goods for me and send it over here [to Mexico]. Other times, they cross the border and bring me the merchandise themselves. Sometimes, I travel to Haiti and buy goods to resell here. If sales are good, I make $355 to $405 per week, but if sales are down, I make $152 to $203. My expenses are the $500 to rent the space each month and the money for utilities. After that, I’m left with around $304 to $355 a month. I currently live here with my wife and one-year-old child. My wife doesn’t work. The business doesn’t allow me to fully support myself and my family. I only told you about business expenses, but I pay rent on my apartment for $152 a month, and I also must buy diapers and milk for the baby and take care of myself and my wife. After all those expenses, I’m only left with around $152 at the end of the month. I tried putting my child in daycare, but they wouldn’t take him because my wife doesn’t have a job. But she’s not able to work because she has to stay home and take care of the child! In the United States, they provide more support for children, but not here. When my wife had contractions, I went with her to the hospital twice and was turned away both times. I even had health insurance at the time, and they didn’t accept it. I had to pay $1,268 out of pocket for her to get a C-section. The other countries I’ve been to are not like this. Though I will say that while the police and immigration don’t give you any problems here, the economic opportunities are slim. To save money, I’m forced to keep my money at home.
I don’t have employees, but if I’m not there and have to leave someone at the shop, I pay them $15 for the day. In a factory, someone working eight hours a day is only paid $9. If a person comes in and works for me from 8:00 am–5:00 pm, I give them $15 to help better their lives. I don’t want them to spend all day and night at the shop, so I put a limit on overtime.
I’ve been here [in Mexico] for three years, but the only reason I came is to get to the United States. Most Haitians didn’t come here to stay, but since there are no opportunities to cross over, I’ve resigned myself to being here. This place doesn’t offer any incentives to stay. If you’re not working for yourself, you could spend up to ten years here without achieving anything because what you’re getting paid is not enough to meet your needs. Factory workers only get paid $60 a week. That’s not enough for anyone to meet their needs.
My dream was never to stay in Mexico, and now I’m stuck here. The dreams I want to accomplish for myself will not come to fruition in Mexico. I want to achieve a lot of things; I want to build a bigger business. If I could get to the United States or Canada, I could learn whatever I wanted to learn, but here I can’t.
Right now, I have the one-year humanitarian visa. If I get a chance to go to the United States beforehand, I won’t renew it. Despite how difficult it is to get into the U.S. right now, I still think that if I could go and work for a year, I would be able to accomplish so much! If you cross the border with a family, you spend less time in detention before you’re released, but if you go as a single person, you’ll be detained up to a year before you’re released. You can get deported as well. But if you’re within a family unit, they can detain you today and release you into the United States tomorrow. If I could leave Mexico right now, I would. Plenty of people have gone with their families. I just don’t want to run into any problems, so I’ll wait here and suffer in Mexico until things get a little better.