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Caribbean-Latin America
US construction slump means Mexicans going home
2007-05-30
Ernesto Perez, a 27-year-old Mexican immigrant, says construction work in New York has become so scarce he's stopped sending money back to his parents in the southwestern state of Guerrero. ``If I don't find work soon, we're moving back home,'' Perez said last week as he walked away from the corner in Queens, New York, where he and dozens of Hispanic workers hope to get chosen for construction jobs. On this day, Perez gave up after a six-hour wait.

The U.S. housing slump is squeezing Mexican migrant workers from Los Angeles to New York, where permits for new home construction are down 20% this year, according to the Census Bureau. That's reducing the pace of money transfers, the second-biggest source of dollars in Mexico after oil exports, and turning the peso into a laggard among Latin American currencies.

Remittances rose 3.4% in the first quarter, the slowest growth in eight years. The peso has strengthened 0.1% this year to 10.8137 per dollar, the second-worst performance among the most-traded currencies in the region. Morgan Stanley predicts the Mexican peso will fall for a second straight year because of the slowdown in money transfers, a drop in oil production and weakening demand for the country's exports.

Cross-border transfers, which totaled $23 billion last year, also have been hurt by President George W. Bush's crackdown on illegal immigrants. Bush increased security along the border and stepped up raids on factories hiring undocumented workers to help win congressional support for a bill that would give illegal immigrants a chance for permanent residency.

The number of people caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally from Mexico dropped almost one-third in the first quarter to 265,000, according to U.S. Border Patrol data. The decline in illegal immigrants mirrors the U.S. housing market. Residential construction in the U.S. fell by 17 percent in the first quarter, according to the Commerce Department. The construction industry is the biggest source of work for Mexicans in the U.S., accounting for about 20% of jobs, data from Mexico's central bank shows.

The pace of money transfers has moved in step with the U.S. construction industry since the late 1990s, said Dawn McLaren, a research economist at Arizona State University in Tempe. The correlation between the two has become so strong that she uses border apprehensions as a ``leading indicator'' for the U.S. housing market.
Posted by:trailing wife

#9  Buh-bye.

Don't let the Rio Grande border crossing hit ya' in the ass on the way home.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2007-05-30 21:26  

#8  Bloomberg article

says it all right there, a pro illegal whore org if there ever was one.
Posted by: RD   2007-05-30 14:52  

#7  And a related UPI article:

The growth rate of the Mexican-born population in the United States has been slowing since the middle of last year, the Pew Hispanic Center reported.

The Washington group said in 2005 and 2006, the Mexican-born population grew at about 8 percent a year but in the first quarter of 2007 the growth rate slowed to 4.2 percent.

That equates the earlier growth to about 495,000 people a year on a quarterly basis versus 288,000 for this year's first quarter.

The center said U.S. employment of all foreign-born Hispanics in the first quarter grew by 3.3 percent compared with 6.6 percent gains in the quarters ranging from 2004 to 2006.

Pew said there are an estimated 7 million Mexicans living in the United States, up from 4 million in mid-2000.

That last statistic is considerably lower than the 12 million in the previous post, a number I've seen estimated as high as 20 million. Although possibly that last is the estimate of all illegal residents, not just the Mexicans.
Posted by: trailing wife   2007-05-30 13:45  

#6  There are silver linings.
Posted by: JohnQC   2007-05-30 13:43  

#5  In a related Bloomberg article
Bartley Mullohan, general manager of Construction Databases Inc. in Miamisburg, Ohio, says he's seeing fewer immigrants on worksites in Ohio and other parts of the Midwest where his company does business providing pricing information to builders and contractors.

``It seems like there is a definite changing of the guard,'' he said. ``Driving to some job site, six months ago, you would see a lot of Mexicans out framing, doing drywall, interior trim. Now you see fewer of them, and builders have to go back to the traditional workers, the local guys that have always been here.''

Just as government labor statistics don't count many of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants, they miss many independent contractors, whether foreign-born or not
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2007-05-30 13:25  

#4  Adios, muchachos...
Posted by: tu3031   2007-05-30 12:40  

#3  Darn.
Posted by: DarthVader   2007-05-30 12:08  

#2  good, from what i have seen on job sites most aren't worth much a damn besides picking up trash
Posted by: sinse   2007-05-30 11:13  

#1  This puts the lie to the fizz being spouted that "we can't deport 12 million of them ". We don't have to. You crack down on these employers with JAIL sentences when they refuse to ID illegal workers. The illegals who can't find work will head back south. Common sense rules again.
Posted by: Woozle Elmeter2970   2007-05-30 10:01  

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