Meeting Needs From Afar
Immigrant Funds Flow to Families Steadily After Attacks

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 21, 2002; Page C01

After the Sept. 11 attacks, business was down, way down, at the Georgetown restaurant where busboy Leonardo Fernandez swabs tables. Suddenly, his tips dried up. But he couldn't stop sending money home to Argentina -- not with a wife and 2-year-old daughter depending on him.

So Fernandez found a second job. The District resident now clears dirty restaurant dishes in the evening, then stocks shelves overnight at a store in Alexandria.

"The economy has crumbled" in Argentina, the slight 21-year-old said as he filled out paperwork at a money-transfer office recently. So every two weeks he sends $150 to his family. "This helps a lot," he said.

Some experts predicted that U.S. immigrants would send home less money after Sept. 11. But new data from Latin America and the Caribbean suggest a surprising development: The huge "migra-dollar" flows have and apparently grown.

Six countries that are among the top recipients of U.S. immigrant dollars took in about $8.1 billion in the two quarters after Sept. 11, according to figures compiled by Manuel Orozco, a political scientist at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

That's up nearly 11 percent from the same period a year earlier.

"The market has been more active and dynamic than ever," said Orozco, who studied data from the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica and Mexico.

Most of the immigrant money, known as remittances, came from the United States.

Experts suggest many reasons for the increase, including the ever-rising number of immigrants and improved ways of tabulating the dollars sent to developing countries. But there is more at work here than just numbers.

Desperation, for example.

Immigrants "are trying to provide for some basic and vital needs for their loved ones back home. Those needs don't change with a recession," said Wendy Carver-Herbert, a spokeswoman for Western Union, one of the nation's largest money-transfer companies. It has had a steady increase in the number of orders sent from the United States, despite the terror attacks and increased competition from new money-sending companies.

Jose Paz knows about being needy. The D.C. resident grew up with 10 siblings in rural El Salvador before immigrating to the United States in 1990.

When his work hours were slashed after the terrorist attacks, Paz had to tighten his belt.

But there was one expense the construction worker didn't cut: the $200 he sends each month to his mother.

"It's for survival. It buys her food," said Paz, 29, who dipped into his meager savings for the payments until his job resumed its normal rhythm late last year. "I always send the same."

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the homeland of more than half of U.S. immigrants, migrant money has become steadily more vital to local economies. It ballooned to $23 billion last year, a two-thirds increase in six years, according to estimates by the Inter-American Development Bank.

Not all immigrants have been able to keep sending payments back home.

The number of jobless Hispanics -- immigrants and natives -- has shot up by about one-third in the past two years, according to calculations by the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington think tank.

But the decrease in payments by some unemployed immigrants may have been offset by remittances sent by others.

Large numbers of immigrants continue to arrive in the United States, both from traditional sending countries such as Mexico and others ones such as war-scarred Colombia. Despite the recession, the number of Hispanics working in the United States has increased by about 3 percent over the past two years, according to the Pew center.

"Both the number [of Latinos] who are unemployed and employed keeps growing," said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew center. "Continued immigration is one large part of it. And presumably, there are young [Hispanic] people who are aging into the workforce. They're both large and both continuous" forces.

Experts caution that remittance figures are not exact measurements, since the numbers reflect formal channels such as banks or wire-transfer companies and do not capture cash carried home.

Part of the increase in remittances, therefore, could be explained by changes in how people send money. Banks, for example, are increasingly offering services to immigrants. And some Mexicans and Central Americans who normally carry cash home at Christmas may have canceled their trips this year, fearing the border would be tougher to cross on their return, and simply sent the money through a wire transfer, experts said.

Academics and think-tank analysts aren't the only ones surprised by the rising tide of dollars heading south.

Simon Ventura has a neighborhood-eye view of the financial flow, from the Western Union counter at his grocery store, Casa Veiga, in Silver Spring. Despite the terrorist attacks and recession, immigrants continue to send about the same amount through the small shop, roughly $50,000 a week.

"I don't know how the people do it," said Ventura, 51, shaking his head as he paused from taking fistfuls of dollars from immigrants. Mariachi music blared from a wall speaker.

"Many are unemployed. I don't know how to explain it."