Thread: U.S. slowdown squeezes Mexico`s migrant worker bounty

U.S. slowdown squeezes Mexico's migrant worker bounty





By Jason Lange
REUTERS

7:12 a.m. June 18, 2008

TONATICO, Mexico – The mountain of cash sent home by Mexicans in the United States is shrinking for the first time in over a decade, putting the dampers on Mexico's economy as a U.S. slowdown takes work away from immigrants.
In rural towns like Tonatico, in central Mexico, where about half the men are in the United States, rodeos and country dances are being canceled and restaurants, which play U.S. hip hop music brought home by returning sons, are languishing.



Migrant remittances have brought a major injection of dollars in Mexico over the last decade, and forced belt-tightening by the millions of families who depend on money transfers is hurting the economy's important retail sector.
“We have to be a lot more careful with our money,â€

[quote]“All their overtime hours have been taken away,â€

So when does the revenue from high oil prices start trickling down? Huh, Sr. Calderon? Sr. Fox?

Does Mexico even have a government by the people and for the people?

It sounds like Mexicans depend on outside countries way too much.

So how will they ever get the courage to fight all the negative they are faced with down there?

As it is now a lot of the money goes to manufactured food and clothing. Farm families are not producing as much food as they used to. There are modern world quality food plants which are making food sold to the Mexican remittance beneficiaries. What they need to do is increase the amount of food they raise and buy from local sources. That would increase local income and create jobs. The big modern plants located in Mexico City, Guadlajara and Monterey are in the best position to export. One example is California canned tomatoes which rely on immigrant often illegal labor would be better produced in Mexico. A canned tomato is boiled so that kills salmonela sometimes found on fresh.