Gotta love the PC crowd who attacked HP as "racist" for bringing this issue up. Folks, the impact of the housing crash on the illegal immigration issue, as well as millions of families on both sides of the border, is going to be tremendous.
And the 64,000 peso questions are - What will the illegals do now? And what will our corrupted Congress and President do with them?
Hattip to socalhousingbubble for the lead.
U.S. housing slump hammers coveted cash flow to Mexico
MEXICO CITY -- When California's housing market was booming, Lucretia Diaz could feel the good vibrations 2,200 miles away in her rural hamlet in southern Mexico. Her husband, Carlos Romero, an illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, wired her $600 a month from his labors hanging drywall and pounding shingles.
The remittances bought meat for the tacos, new sneakers for the kids and a few extras for the family's home in tiny Juquila, Oaxaca.
No more.
With U.S. homebuilding in the dumps, Romero is working sporadically and sending little money. Diaz and her three young boys are eating rice and beans. She is watching every centavo.
So are economists who track this crucial southward flow of currency. They are worried by what they see. Remittances are the financial lifeblood for millions of Mexican families and a key source of foreign exchange for their government. The $23 billion that maids, cooks and gardeners sent home last year -- almost all from the U.S. -- topped the amount that multinationals invested in Mexico.
But fallout from the U.S. construction industry, which employs 1 in 5 Hispanic immigrants, is now rippling south of the border.
Mexico isn't the only country feeling the effect. Growth in money wired to Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and other Latin American nations has followed the housing market down.
