Mexican immigrants moving back home amid sour economy
Many leaving Chicago, hit by job losses
chicagotribune.com
By Oscar Avila, Tribune correspondent
December 24, 2008
ZINAPECUARO, Mexico — Once again, the immigrants are returning to this town in their Pathfinders and Escalades with the Illinois license plates, trunks full of Christmas presents.
Their annual December homecoming has always been a victory lap of sorts, a testimonial to the success they enjoy in the U.S. and want to share with relatives who welcome them with open arms.
Rafael Garcia is back from Chicago too, but not for a vacation. He's back for good.
In a sign of how the American dream has lost its luster this Christmas season, the stream of Mexicans making holiday visits has been joined by a trickle of citizens returning permanently to towns like Zinapecuaro as jobs disappear in Chicago and other U.S. cities.
Garcia arrived Sunday in a battered Ford van jammed not only with gifts but with every scrap of the life he built during 12 years as a construction worker on Chicago's North Side. In a gravel parking lot a block from his mother's home, Garcia's life in the Lincoln Square neighborhood was unspooled with each box he unpacked.
DVDs of " Spider-Man" and bullfighting. A power drill. A framed family portrait. A half-consumed bottle of House of Stuart whiskey.
As Garcia secured his van, his brother-in-law offered advice as if he were a tourist. "No need to worry. No one steals things around here," he said cheerily.
In some respects, Garcia was pushed out of Chicago, where he was working illegally. All but six of the 18 laborers at his construction company lost their jobs with the real estate bust. Garcia survived, but his hours were cut to the point that he and his wife barely covered rent and child care.
But the 41-year-old Garcia was also pulled home, to the mother who is already preparing the Christmas menu of lamb stew, chicken mole, tamales and punch.
"Do I regret leaving Chicago? I regret nothing," said Garcia, still looking flustered after four days on the road. "Best decision I ever made."
These personal dramas will shape the stalled debate over how to treat the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Although Barack Obama's election has revived hopes of a legalization plan, most experts are skeptical, given that the same economic crisis is battering U.S.-born workers.
Mexican officials, meanwhile, are bracing for more Rafael Garcias and the strains that might be felt on villages accustomed to sending immigrants and receiving a share of their paychecks in the U.S., a figure that topped $25 billion last year.
The cracks in the system had already been felt in Zinapecuaro, a town in northeast Michoacan, the state that by many estimates sends the most immigrants to Chicago.
The state of Michoacan has seen remittances falling steadily since 2006, a danger because it receives about $2.5 billion a year—about one-sixth of its total revenues—from workers in the U.S.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-mexico-dream_aviladec25,0,6633115.story
