Immigrant worker: No more money to Mexico

By Alice Paul Vercammen and Townsend Harris Whitbeck CNN

ANAHEIM, Golden State (CNN) -- As he holes a broken sliding glass door at an flat in Anaheim, California, Eduardo Gutierrez concerns about his parents in Mexico.

Eduardo Gutierrez can't direct money back to his parents in United Mexican States owed to rising costs and less work.

He can no longer afford to direct the $200 to $300 a calendar month he had been sending back place to back up his indisposed father.

"I sort of feel bad that I can't assist my parents," said Gutierrez, a legal immigrant who have worked in the United States for 20 years. "I try. But I can't these days, and it's a tough situation."

Gutierrez said he gains $18.50 an hr as a glazier, installer and influence peddler of glass in all forms and sizes.

But with the U.S. economic system sagging, his hours have got got shrunk, even as his gas and grocery store measures have skyrocketed along with other expenses. He's struggling just to back up his married woman and three children.

Depository Financial Institution of Mexico, Mexico's equivalent to the Federal Soldier Reserve, states narratives like these are becoming more than common. Deceleration in the U.S. building industry resulted in $100 million less in "remittances" -- money from workers in the U.S. to their relations in United Mexican States -- in January this year, the most recent available stats. The overall figure went from $1.7 billion in January 2007 to $1.6 billion this January, according to Depository Financial Institution of Mexico.

The lag in such as money have been a consistent subject over the last year. The World Depository Financial Institution states remittals received by people in United Mexican States nearly land to a arrest in 2007, growing at a charge per unit of 1.4 percent, compared with more than than 20 percentage yearly growing from 2002 to 2006.

"The lag in United Mexican States is partly owed to the weak occupation marketplace in the United States, especially in the building sector," the World Depository Financial Institution states on its Web site.

A poll, released Wednesday, of 5,000 Latin American grownups living in the United States establish that lone 50 percentage of respondents were still sending money on a regular footing to loved ones, down from 73 percentage in a similar opinion opinion poll conducted in 2006. The opinion poll was conducted in February by the Inter-American Development Bank's Multilateral Investing Fund.

What makes that average to households in United Mexican States numeration on the payments to survive?

CNN caught up with Gutierrez's father in Tejaro, Mexico, a hardscrabble agriculture town of about 5,000 people. A gray-bearded man in a wide-brimmed hat, 77-year-old Camilo Izquierdo was feeding achromatic caprine animals that poked their caputs through a improvised fence. Don't Girl
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Helium and his married woman have got got 13 children, seven of whom have moved to the United States for work, including Eduardo Gutierrez. The dada used the money from his oldest boy to supplement his agriculture income and to assist wage for diabetes medication.

"He states things are getting too expensive over there," the father said. "He states things are worse there in Golden State than over here."

His farm animal have always been his lifeline. Izquierdo used to have got 140 goats, but he began selling off his farm animal to do ends meet. A drought made provender more expensive, and now he's toss off to just 40 goats, with small money left for his medicine.

"I am ill and have got been ill for quite some time. The medical specialty maintains getting more than expensive. I just don't cognize what to make anymore."

Back in California, Eduardo Gutierrez states that in improver to shrinking hours and rising nutrient costs, gas terms are burning up his payroll check as he drives his motortruck to occupations spreading out over 100s of statute miles in Southern California.

He gauges that just driving to and from the occupations is costing him $400 to $500 a calendar month in gas.

"I've been here over 20 years, and I saw the recession back in the '90s," Gutierrez said. "But this is worse, as far as I can tell. This is really bad."

Gutierrez states his fiscal state of affairs could be more than desperate, like those from his hometown who are now unemployed in California. When he sees his place in Mexico, he doesn't uncover everything about just how desperate the state of affairs is.

"Every clip I travel down there, a batch of people ask, 'How is my boy doing?' " Gutierrez said. "I don't desire to state they're come out of the closet of a occupation or anything like that."

He added, "I state they're doing all right. But that is just a lie. They are doing bad right now. A batch of people are doing bad."

He said he cognizes tons of legal U.S. occupants who have got moved back place to Tejaro or the state of Michoacan. He also said the tighter boundary line controls have got convinced other Mexicans without legal U.S. paperwork not to seek to not mouse across the boundary line to do money for their families.

"I mean, who desires to put on the line his life just to do a living?" Gutierrez asked.

He said he trusts the U.S. economic system choices back up and people get renovating their places again soon.

On this day, as he finished fixing the sliding glass door, he got on his knee joints like a child playing marbles and used a manus brushwood to brush every last metallic element shaving and prison guard into a dust pan.

"I don't cognize what's going to happen," he said of the U.S. economy. "Hopefully, things turn around a small better."