Tijuana immigration service office closing

Effective July 3, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service will close its field office in Tijuana, Baja Calif., where it has been receiving and processing applications for immigration and border crossing documents.
 
Residents of San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., and Los Algodones, Baja Calif., will have to travel to the agency's field office in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, or to Mexico City to secure the documents.
 
Agency spokeswoman Marie Sebrechts said the Tijuana office is being closed as part of efforts to “make the operations and resources more efficient, because we have seen that the majority of the work in Tijuana is focused in giving information that the customers could obtain from the Internet or on the phone.”
 
Sebrechts added that the last five years USCIS has tried to make information available through the Internet or the telephone. She said the distribution of applications for immigration purposes could be centralized in the offices in Ciudad Juarez and Mexico City, where there is more demand for these services.
 
"The majority of the people who go to Tijuana (go) to request information and applications but not for interviews, and that is why we think not many people will be affected, because that information can be obtained thought the Internet or the telephone." 
  
For more information, contact the CIS District Office in Mexico City by e-mail, mexico.uscis@dhs.gov, or by phone, 5255-5080-2000.

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Cesar Neyoy is a staff writer for Bajo El Sol, The Sun's Spanish-language sister publication from which this story is reprinted.