Just about every politician with a stake in San Diego’s border region met Monday on the bridge overlooking the construction at San Ysidro Port of Entry to ask Congress to earmark funds to complete the project.
“It’s on our Christmas list,” said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego). “We’ve all put it on our Christmas list, so we would like to have it.”
The first phase of the San Ysidro expansion is scheduled to be finished by the end of next year. But funding for the final two phases still is in limbo.
The House Appropriations Committee will begin meeting in January to decide how to allocate the funds in the bipartisan budget deal recently passed. San Diego-area politicians are stumping for the San Ysidro funding to be included.
President Barack Obama already included funding for San Ysidro in his 2014 budget proposal.
The San Ysidro Port of Entry is the busiest land border crossing in the world. The San Diego Association of Governments estimates that long wait times cost the economies of the U.S. and Mexico at least $7 billion a year.
