San Ysidro businessmen and shopkeepers struggled for two years trying to remove border crossing restrictions for Mexicans as they noticed that this impacted their businesses and economies; several businesses closed due to this.

However, after one year since the restrictions ended, they are still struggling to remain open and there are still expectations that those customers who couldn’t cross due to the restrictions come back.

According to the executive director of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce, Jason Wells speaking with Border News, shoppers haven’t come back as they did before the pandemic.

In addition, he said that the pandemic hit San Ysidro Boulevard especially hard where most of the businesses are mom-and-pop shops. 95% of their customers are from Mexico, and 95% of these customers have tourist visas and they weren’t allowed to cross, which he said was devastating.

Jason Wells also stated that the long border waiting times to cross into the United States is one of the main factors as to why customers have stopped visiting their shops.

Another thing that is not helping is that prices are not as cheap as they used to be before the pandemic, due to inflation and Mexico’s own economic problems.

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