The U.S./Mexico border narrowly avoided a shutdown on Thursday, which begs the question: if it did shut down, how would it impact surfers? Photo: Flickr/CBP
For decades now, Mexico’s Baja Peninsula has attracted many a California-based surfer looking to find their own slice of paradise. Whether that’s a reeling right point, a punchy beach break, or an above-average day with friends topped off with a fresh fish taco and a cold beer. Perfection takes many forms.
Getting around in Baja, the chosen mode of transport is typically some form of all-terrain vehicle that can handle the dusty, unpaved roads that guard many of Baja’s best-kept secrets. As such, toiling at the border on both ends of a surf trip has become the hallmark of a Mexican jaunt as much as the aforementioned tacos and cold beer. Entering Mexico is of less consequence than leaving, which at the San Ysidro/Tijuana border crossing can be an hours-long ordeal of idling with hundreds of your closest friends as vendors hawking everything from churros to elaborately sculpted manger scenes (I’ve seen them!) try to lock eyes with you and make a sale. It’s a glorious amalgam of sights and smells that words can only begin to explain.
The point is: the Baja surf trip is as native to the California surf experience as the waves that are technically within US borders. Rhetoric from the White House has suggested that travel at the border could soon come to a screeching halt. Which begs the question: how would that impact traveling surfers?
Congress must get together and immediately eliminate the loopholes at the Border! If no action, Border, or large sections of Border, will close. This is a National Emergency!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2019
According to reports, President Donald Trump plans to visit a section of his completed border wall in Calexico on Friday. In the run-up to his trip, the President toyed with the notion of shutting down the U.S./Mexico border completely – the details of which border crossings and for how long were scant. After significant pushback Thursday from residents along the border and politicians, many of whom are from the President’s party, President Trump walked back his statements saying he’ll give Mexico a “one-year warning” to halt the flow of drugs north.
Most experts argue the threat is an empty one, that the $502 billion worth of goods that transit the border annually is too great a cost to shut the border down completely.
If it were to happen, though, it’s unclear if north-south flow would continue undeterred or if Mexico would close its gates in response. In other words, during a border shutdown could one skip down to Mexico and wait it out knowing full well the border couldn’t stay closed forever, thereby scoring even less-crowded waves in the process? Maybe. It’d depend on how Mexico were to respond.
In all likelihood, a shutdown of the border would drastically reduce tourism (of which traveling surfers make up a decent chunk). And according to recent figures, Baja is in the midst of a multi-year tourism boom (read: 27 million visitors and $6 billion in revenue in 2018) its officials are likely hopeful will continue.
Given there’s no public data on how many travelers are crossing the border for the express purpose of scoring waves, it’s difficult to gauge the financial impact of surf travel on the region specifically. Still, a brief disruption in tourism, based on the figure above, could mean a loss of an estimated $16 million per day in tourism dollars for the Baja region.
And while a complete shutdown was narrowly avoided this time, we may never know how many surf trips were canceled and itineraries changed as a result of the potential threat of a closed border.
