With 6,200 people camped out at its stadiums and no state welfare help coming from Mexico City, Tijuana has offered a job fair to the Central American caravan migrants as a practical means of reducing the pressure valve that thousands of foreign unemployed military-aged young men camped out in their city present, as well as getting a lot of unfilled factory jobs filled as the migrants await their U.S. asylum appointments.  For the migrants, the reward is good money in a far more civilized city than the one they left.

Are the caravan migrants flocking to take that opportunity?  Doesn't sound like it, based on the news accounts.  From Mexico News:

Wilmar Correa, a 27-year-old Honduran, is one of hundreds of migrants who have attended the fair.

Did they say hundreds?  From a pool of 6,200 migrants awaiting their asylum claims to be adjudicated in Tijuana, with 7,000 to 10,000 jobs on offer?  Hundreds?  It doesn't sound like a high number.

Here's the Arizona Republic, reporting the same thing:

On Monday, interest in the job fair piqued [sic] among the migrants staying at the Unidad Deportiva Benito Juarez, eager to make some cash while they waited in Mexico.  A small number lined up outside, amid barricades and a strong police presence, to board government buses that would take them, 25 at a time, from the shelter to the job fair site.

A small number?  Interesting.

Note that this is Mexico's second generous offer to the caravan migrants, the carrot to President Trump's stick.  Back when the migrant caravan first busted through Mexico's southern border, the Mexicans offered the migrants asylum in Mexico's two southern states, Chiapas and Oaxaca, neither of which is all that crime-plagued and both of which have cultural similarities to the lands the migrants left behind.  Only a couple thousand took that offer up.  Now in Tijuana, they are being offered jobs, really good jobs, the highest paid in Mexico, and...only a small number, so far, want them.

The article goes on to explain that many of the caravan migrants still prefer to sneak into the U.S. illegally without taking a pro-offered Mexican job, skipping the U.S. asylum process, too, and just entering when the troops are gone, the concertina wire is cut, and the coast is clear.  Jobs in Mexico, even good ones, are for the birds.  As for the migrants who actually take the jobs, they might still enter the U.S. illegally, too, according to the reports, which isn't much of an incentive for Mexican employers to hire and train them.  This, despite the other things the Mexicans are offering them: humanitarian visas, Social Security numbers, and essentially legalization at least to work, while giving the maquiladoras tax credits for taking these people.

Maybe that's because the jobs on offer are real jobs.  If you look at this EuroNews screengrab, notice that the employers of the factories have standards, and the migrants are warned not to do certain things:

Image credit: Euro News via YouTube screen grab.

Point 5 of the migrant job application form states:

It is prohibited in an interview to:

• Show up without washing
• Eat food or chew gum
• Dress without a coat or suspenders (this may be a faulty translation with regional terms missed)
• Wear see-through or sequined garments
• T-shirts, tennis shoes, or shorts
• Skirts too short
• Clothing patterns that distract attention
• Open or dirty sandals or shoes

Sounds as though these are normal jobs with normal standards, and some aren't going to be able to adapt to that.  How else to explain that a lot of the caravan migrants aren't interested, though the job fair will go on through half of December?  If the caravan migrants turn their noses up at these jobs, what do they want as they enter the States?  The claims of "only wanting to work" don't seem to be operative with these generous offers from the Mexicans.  The U.S. should take note.