Thread: For Hispanics in U.S., a dream is going sour

For Hispanics in U.S., a dream is going sour

(Would that be the American Dream, or the illegal immigrant dream?
Sorry, couldn't help myself....)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/12/ ... spanic.php


by Peter S. Goodman Published: May 12, 2008
DALTON, Georgia:

U.S. downturn upsets dreams of Hispanics
In his first years in the United States, Carlos Jacinto endured the itinerant life of a Guatemalan migrant worker, from picking fruit in Florida to moving logs at a sawmill in Washington. Eventually, he settled here in northern Georgia and erected a middle-class American life.

The carpet factories that sustained this town were desperate for workers to supply a nationwide boom in home construction. The wages that Jacinto earned over the last decade were enough to buy a minivan and a brick house with a yard and a swing set for his four young girls. It was a long way from his childhood home in Guatemala: a wooden shack without electricity or plumbing.

But last month, amid the shrinking fortunes of the American economy, Jacinto, 37, was laid off. Everything he has achieved is suddenly at risk.

"Am I going to be able to keep up the payments on my house?" he asked. "I never believed this could happen. Now, we don't know the future."

The economic downturn unfolding across the United States is imposing a particularly punishing toll on Hispanics, a group that was among the primary beneficiaries of the expansion in recent years. What had been a story of broad and steady advances has given way to growing joblessness, diminishing paychecks and lost homes.

The boom in American housing generated millions of new jobs for those willing to engage in physically demanding tasks, from factory work churning out floorboards, carpeting and upholstery, to landscaping, roofing and janitorial services. Latinos occupied widening swaths of these trades and filled large numbers of relatively high-paying construction jobs.

As a great influx of Latino immigrants spread beyond the initial entryways of the Southwest into smaller cities and towns across the South and the Midwest, many found employment doing much of the unpleasant work shunned by those with better prospects.

But now significant portions of this work are disappearing and what were once the fastest-growing areas of the United States, including states with expanding Hispanic populations like Florida, California, Georgia and Nevada, are often bearing the brunt of the pain.

From April of last year to April of this year, the Labor Department reported, the unemployment rate among Hispanics spiked 1.4 percentage points, to 6.9 percent. By comparison, the overall jobless rate rose half a percentage point, to 5 percent.

For the nearly 19 million Latino immigrants in the United States, the turndown in the job market has significantly cut into earnings, dropping the share of those sending money home to families in Latin America from nearly three-fourths two years ago to about half, according to a survey released last week by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Economic troubles now threaten to reverse a long period of gains in homeownership among Latinos as well. From 1994 to 2006, the rate of Hispanic homeownership climbed to 50 percent from 41 percent, according to census data, a pace more than double the increase among non-Hispanics.

Growth was fueled by heavy reliance on subprime mortgages - loans extended to people with troubled credit histories, which have since proved the most likely to go bad.

By 2006, 47 percent of the loans issued for home purchases by Hispanics were subprime, nearly double the rate for non-Hispanic whites, according to a paper by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Only African-Americans leaned harder on subprime loans.

Last year, the homeownership rate among Latinos fell, a trend likely to continue: One in 12 of the mortgages made to Latino households in 2005 and 2006 are likely to fail, estimates Catherine Singley, a policy fellow at the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group in Washington.

Georgia is one of many states in which Hispanics are now feeling strains. From 2000 to 2007, the state's Hispanic population grew more than 70 percent, according to census data.

In the Atlanta area, construction exerted a strong pull, mirroring the national trend. Nationally, Latinos rose from one-fifth of the construction work force in 2000 to almost one-third by 2006, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the Economic Policy Institute.

Among foreign-born Hispanics, construction was responsible for 46 percent of the growth in employment from 2004 to 2006, according to Rakesh Kochhar, an economist at the Pew Hispanic Center.

Now, that dynamic is working in reverse. "Hispanics are concentrated in an industry that is leading the downturn," Kochhar said.

For the last eight years, José Serrano, an illegal immigrant, has crammed into rented houses in Atlanta with five and six other men while working construction jobs that paid about $10 an hour, sending most of his earnings home to Mexico City to support his wife and three children.

But since November, Serrano has failed to find steady work. Every morning, he joins dozens of others in a parking lot, where contractors hire for odd jobs. Most days, he waits in vain, he said.

Now, there is no money to send home. He has sold his car, navigating Atlanta's freeway-laced sprawl by bicycle. He has been borrowing from friends to pay his rent of $150 a month.

Others in his situation have returned to Mexico, he said, discouraged by the deteriorating job market and a recent surge in crackdowns against illegal immigrants. If things do not soon improve, so will he, though he is pained by the thought of having to lean on the very family he is supposed to be supporting.

"Your dreams have disappeared," Serrano said. "Your family is counting on you for basic necessities. You feel defeated."

Dalton, a town of 35,000 people 90 miles, or about 140 kilometers, northwest of Atlanta, is where three-fourths of the carpeting in the United States is produced. It benefited from the housing boom, serving as an archetype of Hispanic upward mobility.

Before the 1980s, the carpet industry attracted mostly white blue-collar workers from as far as Tennessee and Alabama, offering wages that paid enough to support families. But competition intensified and as similar jobs sprang up elsewhere, Dalton's carpet mills struggled to find enough workers. (They drove down wages is why!)

Among Latinos, word spread that a small town in Georgia, with fresh air and thick stands of trees, had abundant jobs at wages reaching $14 an hour. Houses were affordable.

"This was the dream they were seeing on television," said America Gruner, founder of the Latino Leaders Coalition, a local social service organization.

Today, Latinos make up about 40 percent of the city's population, up from 10 percent a decade ago. About 70 percent of the students in the city school system are Hispanic.

"They came in here and saved jobs," said Dalton's mayor, David Pennington. "This is a one-industry town. If they hadn't come here, the carpet industry was going to leave." (Again, they drove down wages)

Thats the thing . Companys don't want to pay . But the Illegal is always there . Poor management skills and business deals play a huge part in this Anti-American wage issue . We got taxes to pay , schooling etc etc . The Illegal is like a Union busting SCAB , and they demand to much for "Working so hard". What the hell do they think we did ? But as wages sunk we all when looking for enough to pay the bills . But the Illegal is always there . Now if Dalton carpets (all the big mills a round Dalton) want to treaten us with "We would have lefted". Then fine go to Mexico , keep your Mexican in house and local . Bunch of thieves the companys and the Illegals

What pisses me off is that many Open Border groups now want the American tax payers to keep these illegals in the U.S. even though we all know that in a few months, they will deport themselves for economic reasons. What Congress hasn't done, the economy is doing.

For Hispanics in U.S., a dream is going sour

Tears on my pillow.

WHAT ABOUT THE AMERICAN DREAM FOR AMERICANS!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by tencz57

Thats the thing . Companys don't want to pay . But the Illegal is always there . Poor management skills and business deals play a huge part in this Anti-American wage issue . We got taxes to pay , schooling etc etc . The Illegal is like a Union busting SCAB , and they demand to much for "Working so hard". What the hell do they think we did ? But as wages sunk we all when looking for enough to pay the bills . But the Illegal is always there . Now if Dalton carpets (all the big mills a round Dalton) want to treaten us with "We would have lefted". Then fine go to Mexico , keep your Mexican in house and local . Bunch of thieves the companys and the Illegals

You are right, the Elitist want the "cheap labor" and they don't care about United States Citizens, to the Elitist we are only "units of Labor" and we are part of a "case study", the same as they worked on in their Elitist colleges learning to "maximize their profits"! As far as the Union busting I believe we are seeing Big Labor work with other Elitist Special Interest group such as the Chamber of Commerce and other ILLEGAL EMPLOYERS to secure their own positions.

Poor pitiful peons.

No one (except OJ) is supposed to profit from crime in the USA.

Illegal aliens are career criminals profiting at the expense of law abiding Citizens and it is time for it to STOP.

"The economic downturn unfolding across the United States is imposing a particularly punishing toll on Hispanics, a group that was among the primary beneficiaries of the expansion in recent years. What had been a story of broad and steady advances has given way to growing joblessness, diminishing paychecks and lost homes. "

I have posted more than once that this country was in a false economy. Which came first the chicken or the egg?? Let's hire a whole lot of illegals to build those apartment buildings to house them. Whoa, lookee here, some of those dudes are making 'nuf money they can buy a house. Should they be able to??? Don't ask the developers, they just want to build and sell. Oh, then we need even more "undocumented" workers now to build more houses and "Oh, by the way, look at all the shoppers at WalMart and other retail stores." This illegal immigration is a good deal...
And , Oh yes, oh boy, more carpets, more tile, more paint, more refrigerators , oh, appliances are being made in Mexico now, not here?

What, you say the whole economy is a house of cards built on the greatest weakness of economists since the first one was born?? You mean there is not a single economist who can provide a plan to sustain an economy that is not based on growth??? Come on man, that's impossible.

What else is that you say---the "undocumented" are sending at least half of the money back home???Well. that's OK, the people "back home" will buy American products and that will benefit the American workers---well , at least those that have not lost their jobs to illegal immigrants. Impossible.

Well, we will tell our citizens to go into the health industry. Big money there. That is if the system is able to charge ?? Oh, US laws say that the health centers must provide care to anyone who needs it whether they can pay for it or not??? So, in spite of the fact it is a great profession and we should go into it, you are telling me that hospitals are closing???? Hmmmmmm?????? What to do??

OK. let's get all our kids to go to college and get educated for higher paying jobs. Of course, they will have to do it to have a good future. Oh, my son cannot become a carpenter??? It no longer pays enough money, what a shame. Well , maybe he can become an electrician. What??? You say that project managers are hiring illegals to run wire and mount electrical boxes?? And they pay them $11/12 an hour?? But --no bennies and if they get hurt, we carry them to the hospital and warn them to say they got hurt in the street so they can get free care.

OK then, he can be a welder---What, again????What now??? Oh you say Signal Corp in Louisiana brought in over 250 welders from India??? Why the heck did they do that???? What?? because Americans charge too much and there are not enough American welders?? Are you sure??? Or is that at the wages that Signal wants to pay so they can low bid the project???

Well at least we signed the Social Security Treaty with Mexico so that if any of our citizens work there they can collect from the Mexican SS. What?? Gosh, isn't there anything that does not have problems?? You say the Mexican SS is broke???? But, many Mexicans will collect from our SS??Darn, you keep telling me a lot of things that are not good. You say that an American must work for 40 quarters (10 years) to be eligible to collect SS and an alien that has an SS number only has to pay for 18 quarters (4 1/2 years) to be eligible??? Why is that??? Seems darned unfair to me!

You know what---I am having a hard time digesting all of this. I think I will go have a soda and watch TV. My favorite show??? Well, I like a few, but it sure as heck isn't Telemundo!

As illegals poured into those jobs, wages decreased, profit margins increased and so did the salaries of upper management!

Now they are just going to have to replace their cheep labor with real Americans and pay a descent wage!

No wonder we are in a economic downturn. The lower the wages, the less money in circulation, to buy the goods and services offered in our economy.

Hiring of illegal aliens is a major economic burden.

Dixie

But last month, amid the shrinking fortunes of the American economy, Jacinto, 37, was laid off. Everything he has achieved is suddenly at risk.

"Am I going to be able to keep up the payments on my house?" he asked. "I never believed this could happen. Now, we don't know the future."





Quite frankly, I'm glad to hear this. It overjoys me no end to watch these criminals get a dose of their own medicine.

These people are suffering the same fate as that which they forced upon Americans and legal immigrants who lost everything they worked hard for and achieved after being shoved aside by IAs. And, what's so funny about all of this is that, while we may have fallen victim to IAs, they are suffering self inflicted wounds from the economic devastation they have caused this country.

What goes around, comes around and I could care less if every last one of them ends up losing everything . They came here with nothing, they can go home the same way.