RemittancesGateway.org

Salvadoran communities feel sting of recession's deep cuts

Thursday, 11 March 2010 09:59

In this small eastern Salvadoran town, new luxury homes tower over the one-story brick, cement and wooden structures that once predominated. On one block, a three-story mansion with a hot tub sits next door to a humble brick home with an outhouse.

Many of the homes were built with money sent by former townspeople who immigrated to the United States, people who settled mostly in Montgomery and Prince George's counties, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia.

Over the past 20 years, the newer houses reworked the town's landscape into a hodgepodge of splendor and simplicity. But lately, fewer houses are being built in Intipuca. Stores have fewer customers. Employers have fewer jobs.

As the recession hit the United States, Salvadoran immigrants have been sending less money back to towns like Intipuca. America's recession has become theirs as well.

El Salvador's economy relies more heavily on remittances—money sent by immigrants to their home countries— than almost any other in Central America. In 2009, remittances made up 16 percent of the country's gross domestic product, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. In El Salvador, about 22 percent of households receive remittances, and generally they account for 30 percent of a family's income, according to Katharine Andrade-Eelchoff, a researcher who has worked on immigration issues for 25 years.

Since the recession hit, remittances to El Salvador have declined, from $3.788 billion in 2008 to $3.465 billion in 2009, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

Recession hits home

About 6,000 people have left for the United States from Intipuca, which now has a population of 7,800, according to Mayor Hugo Salinas.

Luis Alfredo Zelaya, 55, owns the largest store in the town. More like a small grocery than a supermarket, its aisles are neatly ordered with the basics — fruits, vegetables, cookies and shampoo.

Zelaya, whose brother lives in Langley Park, said since people in town are receiving less remittance money, they are spending less money in his store. Business is down by 30 percent from two years ago, he said.

"If the situation in the U.S. is critical, then it's critical here," he said.

Luis Adonay Argueta, 33, owns a construction company in Intipuca that has built many of the modern American-style homes in town. In 2000, Argueta had 30 people working for him, building three new houses per year. Today, he has four workers, and they mostly do small jobs — fixing doors and windows.

"Sometimes I feel like it's a tsunami, that the water has risen, and now it's nearly flooded us," he said. "Daily, people come and ask me for jobs, and with all the pain in my heart, I have to tell them to wait."

Consumer spending is also down, says Silvia de Meléndez of Integral, a microfinance company in El Salvador that gives small loans and from which some Salvadorans collect remittances.

"Now, the remittances go straight to the necessities," she said. "The consumer economy has suffered — airlines, hotels, construction companies, private schools."

An estimated 6 million people live in El Salvador, according to the World Bank. An estimated 1.5 to 2 million Salvadorans live in the United States, although researchers say the numbers could be much higher because it's difficult to count the undocumented population. In Montgomery County, there are an estimated 31,856 Salvadoran-born immigrants, and in Prince George's the estimate is 29,726, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey.

Many Salvadorans migrated due to the country's civil war in the 1980s and 1990s, but economic forces drove the immigration wave in the 2000s. Most of those who migrate have connections to established Salvadoran communities and social networks, such as family or friends in the United States.

"People in rural El Salvador know more about the labor market in the Washington, D.C., area than they know about the labor market in San Salvador," Andrade-Eelchoff said. "They know more about what kind of job they can get and what it would pay, and they probably have much better connections for getting those jobs. "

In El Salvador, rampant youth delinquency, high murder rates and gangs extorting businesses also drive migration, said Reynaldo Alvergue, director of S.O.S. Immigracíon Internacional, an El Salvador-based immigration advising service.

"Now there's a lot more professionals who want to go, and the majority of them want to go because they're experiencing extortions; and the other half of professionals, they don't find jobs [in El Salvador]," he said. "Then they get [to the U.S.] and have to do a different type of job, because they need the proper licenses. ... I've found doctors cleaning buildings or nurses cleaning houses."

Changing communities

Widespread immigration has changed the cultures and populations of many communities in Montgomery and Prince George's counties over the past 20 years.

The most pressing issue many working-class Latino immigrants face is the lack of jobs, but a new problem has arisen for many newcomers, particularly in Montgomery County.

"It's one they didn't have to face five years ago, the anti-immigrant feelings," said Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland, an immigrant advocacy group In Langley Park. "There have been some attacks against the Latino community."

Many anti-immigration groups take issue with people coming into the country illegally, accusing them of not paying taxes on the wages they earn and causing a strain on local services. And it can take years to achieve legal status, leaving many immigrants in limbo.

But migration has also greatly changed El Salvador. If 2 million Salvadorans have migrated, 2 million families in El Salvador have been affected by it, because most migrants leave family behind, said Jorge Schafik Hándal Vega, a Salvadoran parliament member. Many fear the massive migration has led to the deterioration of those families left behind, but researchers don't know how profound the impact has been and whether it has contributed to the country's rampant delinquency.

"[Migration is] one of the most heartfelt problems in El Salvador. .... We can't prohibit immigration, and we can't forget those people who leave, because they sustain us. But we have to create the conditions for them so they don't want to leave," said Vega, who heads the parliament's commission on external affairs and Salvadorans abroad. "We can no longer depend anymore on exporting people to support our economy."

The lack of "dignified" and skilled employment opportunities, which also drives migration, is something the new government is working to correct, said Vega, who is also a member of the left-wing Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional, or FMLN, party, which in March 2009 won the presidency for the first time in decades. Job creation was one of the party's platforms.

In Intipuca, Salinas is trying to bolster his town's economy by encouraging domestic tourism. In January, the town hosted a food festival, and the annual patron day draws thousands, including many former townspeople living in the Washington, D.C., area who travel back to the town for a week.

Salinas, who moved to the United States and lived in Arlington, Va., for 20 years before returning last year to run for mayor, estimates that the town now receives 30 to 40 percent less remittance money than before the downturn.

But he said expatriate Intipucans still work to support their hometown. In fact, one group of expats has sent $20,000 this year, funding such things as the town's park, which is kept clean and verdant. Not many towns like Intipuca have such a park. It's name: Parque Las/Los Emigrantes — Park of the Immigrants.

Visit "Fractured pipeline," Gazette.Net's collection of reports on the relationship between El Salvador and Maryland.

About this special report: Gazette reporter Elahe Izadi traveled to El Salvador in February to examine the impact of the U.S. recession on local immigrants working to send money to their families and communities in El Salvador. This project was produced on a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship directed by the International Center for Journalists and funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.