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  1. #1
    Senior Member Brian503a's Avatar
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    Ethnic stores' mass appeal

    www.newsday.com

    Ethnic stores' mass appeal
    Longtime residents using Farmingville businesses set up for Mexican laborers

    BY JOHN MORENO GONZALES
    STAFF WRITER

    August 28, 2005

    With cash in their pockets and home on their minds, each day laborer waited to shut himself inside a dimly lit phone booth and dial up a lifeline from Farmingville to Mexico.

    At Envios Espinoza, a money-wiring establishment that features a row of six booths to sell the commodity of privacy to men who live dozens to a house, the workers bought $5 phone cards to connect with loved ones in towns of exotic names and common poverty: Mixquiahuala, Huizachez, Arbolado.

    But even as the familiar scene played itself out on a recent night in a hamlet known for struggling with an influx of Mexican day laborers the last several years, a woman pulled up to the storefront in a red sport utility vehicle, rushed into the business and stirred up a new reality.

    Susana Policarpo, who wired money home to her family's native Portugal, is one of an increasing number of longtime residents who have discovered their own uses for stores that once only served Mexican immigrants.

    "I send money there once a month," Policarpo, 30, said as she climbed back into her SUV to rush off to another errand. When asked if she had reservations about using a business where predominately Mexican patrons wire home more than $10,000 a week, she shook her head and shrugged. "No. This place offers something I need."

    Along Horseblock Road - mostly known for the running mayhem that can take place when contractors hire day laborers from sunrise until about noon - businesses that cater to Mexican workers have become fixtures over the last few years. Among the stores are at least four other wiring businesses with phone booths, a bustling supermarket that sells the day laborers products from home and an immigration lawyer who attracts Mexican walk-ins looking for documented status in the United States.

    "I would say 30 to 40 percent of the businesses in Farmingville, if not more, are Latino," said Raquel Fernandez, of L & A Realty on Horseblock Road, a brokerage that has helped Hispanics move to the area. "Five years ago, it was half that, and a lot of businesses were closed."



    Some apprehension

    Some of the establishments have experienced a lull during this summer's code-enforcement crackdown on overcrowded houses, but owners say they have weathered the downturn with help from unexpected clientele like Policarpo.

    Some longtime residents remain apprehensive about the establishments. But others believe the mingling of non-Latino and Mexican customers has helped the hamlet take steps toward a more harmonious future and sparked an economic resurgence in a fading downtown.

    "It's for everybody," said Sue Yacobellis, 49, as she shopped at Compare Foods, a thriving supermarket on Horseblock Road where Latino products are stocked on each shelf next to American brands. "They cater to everyone's cultural needs. It's convenient. The meat is very inexpensive. It's just the place to shop."

    Manager Jose Peña said when the market opened more than four years ago, half the shopping center's businesses were shut, including the Waldbaum's his operation replaced. Now nearly every storefront is open, including another of the Mexican-themed wiring services and a pizzeria that on a recent night had both day laborers and local teens crowding the booths.



    Appealing to everyone

    "It takes appealing to everybody to make these businesses work," Peña said at the market, which features Spanish-language music over the intercom and an interior that gleams like a freshly minted coin.

    "When we first opened up, we would only play American music, just to get people comfortable. Now I get white customers who ask me 'Where's the Spanish music?' when it's not on. I see them walking in the aisles going like this," he said, with a samba-like shift of his hips.

    Still, not all residents are ready to walk to this new beat.

    Ray Wysolmierski, president of the Greater Farmingville Community Association, which formed from the controversial Sachem Quality of Life group that once called for a military roundup of undocumented Mexicans, said the businesses can keep illegal immigration flowing by providing an economic bridge to Latin America.

    "There are people here who become concerned with what's been called a cultural change," Wysolmierski said. "These cultural changes almost seem to be revolutionary rather than evolutionary."

    Wysolmierski said he was offended recently when the wiring businesses sent him bulk mail advertising cheap rates to send U.S. dollars to Latin America.

    Owners of the wiring services do not dispute that they can pave the way for migration to Long Island, both legal and illegal.

    Carlos Matute, who operates Mary's Travel on Horseblock Road, said his shop not only wires as much as $300,000 each month back to Mexico, but sells airline tickets for as little as $179 for workers to reach Mexico City. Mexican nationals only need Mexican immigration documents to re-enter their homeland, not documents issued by the United States. Matute said the law of supply and demand regulates how many workers migrate to the hamlet. In the winter months, when construction and landscaping work is scarce, the number of Mexican customers decreases by about 70 percent, he said. With the spring, the workers are back in full force.



    Supporting those at home

    Matute pointed out that Mexican immigrants not only buy goods from Latino-themed stores, but they frequently purchase from the area Kmart and other establishments associated with Americana, then mail the wares to Mexico. Their remittances from Long Island, he reasoned, provide economic support to family members in Mexico who would otherwise be tempted to illegally enter the United States for a livelihood.

    "The Mexicans came here for the same reasons as the Europeans," said Matute, who is of Peruvian heritage. "They came here to make money and to send it home."



    Other customers, too

    Fausto Cando, who operates Envios Espinoza, said his shop wires about $50,000 a month to Mexico during the summer. But he also pointed out that about 15 percent of his business comes from local residents who are not Mexican. They wire money to loved ones domestically or in Portugal, Farmingville's most dominant group with European roots. The local residents pay for other items and services provided at the business, like cellular phones and the same-day payment of utility bills, Cando said.

    "We get a lot of American people in here buying stuff up," said Cando, who is of Ecuadorian heritage. "It's because we sell things cheaper."

    Roni Berger, a professor at the Adelphi University School of Social Work who specializes in immigration research, said Farmingville residents need look no farther than across the Queens border to see how immigrant and U.S.-born bargain hunters vitalize ethnically diverse downtowns. Berger acknowledged that such diversification is the very change that some suburbanites are resisting, particularly if it involves illegal immigration.

    But she said the work ethic of new arrivals often earns the respect of established residents and helps the entire community find common ground.

    "Both groups change and both parties change, like in a marriage," Berger said. "It's been rocky change in Farmingville, but it's now come. Welcome to America."
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  2. #2
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    More U.S. dollars going to a foreign country.
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  3. #3
    Senior Member Richard's Avatar
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    I personally have helped to set up such programs but the companies that I was working with required that the immigrants be legal. Again the people that they are quoting in this article are mostly brushing over the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.
    There is also a lot that can be said regarding what the oney goes to home countries for. The purpose of any country's immigration policy whether Mexico, the US, Peru or Portugal is to maximize benefit for the broad community of it's own citizens. Countries can benefit from immigration but what sort of new immigrants and how many is the nations perogative. How it should be done is supposed to be enacted by the democratic consensus and enforced. It is not supposed to maximize the benefit for or ameliorate the condition of people who envy the citizens and then ignore the consensus while competing for jobs and throwing themselves on the public charge for benefits.
    I support enforcement and see its lack as bad for the 3rd World as well. Remittances are now mostly spent on consumption not production assets. Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

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