Mexican migrants line city sidewalks for passports
Michelle Cerone / Metro Editor
Issue date: 4/1/08 Section: Page One
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The Consulate on Wheels, which was in the city for five days beginning last Monday, issued about 2,500 passports to Mexican citizens. They had to turn away others who did not have the correct paperwork or were not Mexican citizens.
"What we do is, people stand in line outside," Yolanda Castro, consul of the Consulate on Wheels said. "We try to determine from the very outside if they are applicants that will be able to get their documents with whatever they show us right there."
She said they check to see if the documents are the originals and then help people fill out the paper work.
The consulate hopes to provide this service year round so people do not have to wait on such long lines, Castro said.
"It's not nice. It's not good and it's not worth it," she said about the long wait.
New Brunswick Tomorrow organized the mobile consulate with the Mexican consulate. The organization, founded in 1975, manages the social revitalization of the city and focuses on health, human service and educational issues Jeffery Vega, the president of the organization said.
"Before this we met with the ambassador from the Mexican consulate's office who asked for us to coordinate the effort," Vega said. "We reached out to the two Mexican American organizations and the Lazos America Unida and reached out to them because they are the ones who have contact with the community."
Vega said, in New Brunswick, the largest segment of the Hispanic community is Mexican, which made it an ideal location for the consulate to stop.
"People are expecting to be received so they stay overnight, with children, elders. It doesn't matter if it's raining. It was raining yesterday," Teresa Vivar said. Vivar is the president of Lazos America Unida, a non-profit volunteer organization that promotes the exchange of knowledge.