“I’m the father of four children and you know, obviously I have my wife, so there’s a lot of people depending on me. Should I get sick and either die or not be able to work, then that puts our family in an extremely difficult situation.”

 

The San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce assists businesses from starting up to growing. Since Jason represents 800 businesses at the world's busiest land border crossing, a lot of their issues are federal, he does a lot of advocacy with the federal government both of Mexico and the U.S. They do events to bring people to the community. The Chamber of Commerce does a lot to improve the commercial area such as “keeping the streets clean, anti-graffiti, decoration, lighting, etc.” Jason has been working with the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce for 16 years, being with the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce for 5 years prior. His father owned a small business, and after seeing how that affected him, he took an interest in helping small businesses. After high school, Jason joined the Navy in which he took college courses, studying business marketing and administration.

 

“We were extremely hit because of the border restrictions during this COVID period.” Most of the customers that go to the business on the San Ysidro boulevard come from Mexico. Since they weren't allowed to cross. Most of the businesses were greatly impacted, having very few customers.

 

Jason mentioned that from now on people will always think twice about attending their events. “There’ll be some permanent changes, I don’t think we’ll ever go back to how life was before COVID.”