This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
The government of El Salvador is expected to open a new consulate in Fresno this spring, providing critical services for the Central Valley’s Salvadoran immigrants.
The Fresno-based consulate, which is expected to open in early April, is one of two new consulates that the Salvadoran government plans on inaugurating in California in the coming weeks, Alejandro Letona, a consul at the Consulate General of El Salvador in Los Angeles, told The Bee Wednesday.
The second consulate will open in San Bernardino, he said. Currently, El Salvador has just two consulates in California, located in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
El Salvador is also slated to open consulates in Minnesota and New Mexico in May.
“This was a very practical decision,” Letona said in Spanish. “Our community in the Central Valley will save time and money because they won’t have to travel far to get access to services.”
The Los Angeles Times en Español was the first news outlet to report the opening of the Fresno and San Bernardino consulates.
The consulate’s services include renewing or replacing lost or stolen passports, helping with tax returns and absentee voting, notarizing documents, registering births to citizens living in the U.S., certifying marriages or divorces abroad, arranging emergency evacuations and connecting residents to medical or legal assistance.
The demand for consulate services in the Valley and across the state has grown due to California’s large Salvadoran community, Letona said. Nearly half of the 1.4 million Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S. live in California, making it the state with the largest population of Salvadorans, according to The Migration Policy Institute. California is also home to the most Salvadorans who have been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) – about 49,100 people, according to a 2017 report from the Center for Migration Studies.
Adriana Saldivar, a program manager with the Latino Community Foundation, said the Valley’s Salvadoran residents will now have “access to additional vital services, resources, and local representation,” which are “key to the prosperity of all Californians.”
“This new Salvadoran consulate underscores the growing influence of California as a key Latino region in the world and the increasing international ties throughout the Americas,” she added.
Local leaders say the new consulate will be a critical resource for the region’s growing Salvadoran community.
Mendota, located about 35 miles west of Fresno, has become a bastion for many Salvadoran immigrants — including unaccompanied minors — fleeing from crime, poverty and violence, said Víctor Martínez, who is the former mayor pro tem of Mendota and a local Salvadoran community leader. About a third of the small agricultural community’s 11,500 residents are from Central America.
Martínez said the new location will be especially useful to Salvadorans who work in the Valley’s agricultural industry. They will no longer have to spend time or money traveling long distances to a consulate, or delay getting services because of the lengthy trip, he said.
“It’s very important to the Salvadoran community,” he said. “It’s going to help having an office here in Fresno for people who don’t have the money or resources to travel to San Francisco or L.A.”
For Mendota resident Kevin Hernandez, 28, the new consulate means he won’t have to commute to complete a simple service like renewing a passport. Hernandez said he had to drive four hours to Los Angeles last year to renew his passport, which was “frustrating” because he had to wait four or five more hours before getting assistance.
“This new location will make it much easier for us to complete a simple task,” he said in Spanish. “It’s not just us in Mendota who will benefit, but also the community in places like Merced and Salinas.”
In the past, the Salvadoran government would set up mobile consulates in the Valley a couple of times a year, Hernandez said. But appointments were hard to come by and wait times were often long. He said the new consulate will make it easier for Salvadorans to make appointments and receive quicker assistance.
“It used to be so difficult to get anything done,” he added. “That’s why this is really exciting for all of us Salvadorans.”
This story was originally published February 17, 2022 5:00 AM.