Mexico States of Zacatecas and Michoacán in economic turmoil due to dramatic drop in remittances from illegals working abroad in the United States

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FORMER BORDER PATROL OFFICERS
Visit our website: http://www.nafbpo.org
Foreign News Report

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.

 
Excelsior  (Mexico City)  1/27/09    (full translation) 
The economic crisis which lashes the United States forces the Mexican workers, legal and illegal, to return to their places of origin.
According to Carlos Villanueva, president of the World Association of Mexicans Abroad, (“AMME”) 30 percent of the nearly two million fellow countrymen who arrived in the country during the December season to spend the yearend holidays with their relatives have not returned to the United States for lack of a job which would guarantee their stay in the neighboring country.
Villanueva explained that the contraction and recession in the world market has mainly affected the more unprotected classes of the United States, among which is found the Mexican migrant community.
During an interview with Martin Espinosa for “the First Report Program 98.5” (Villanueva) who also founded “AMME” pointed out that one million 583 thousand jobs were lost by the close of 2008 in the neighbor country, of which one million were formal jobs and the rest were of the informal sector, mainly composed of illegal Hispanic immigrants, among them the Mexicans.
We are the most disorganized community, and therefore the ones who are most easily expelled from the United States.
Nevertheless, Carlos Villanueva emphasized that despite the number of countrymen who already are in Mexico, there is another large number of immigrants affected by the crisis who gamble on staying in the United States, and because of this have been obligated to change into poorly paid work activities.
Construction workers have changed direction, earn some 60 percent less, but are going into other sectors, many are selling flowers at the street corners and many others have begun to compete for a spot as gardeners, all of them with very low wages, he underscored.
On another matter, Villanueva asserted that the drop in individual monetary remittances for December 2008 was 33 percent, for which reason states such as Zacatecas and Michoacán have already gone into economic emergency.
In view of these numbers, Villanueva urged the federal government to again take up negotiations about a necessary immigration reform with the new American President, Barack Obama, to attempt to improve the fellow countrymen’s conditions in that country.

The preceding article was followed by the following commentary from Jose Rubalcava Reyna:
 
Granted that the economy. which is presently globalized, can affect the world’s countries, we ( or the government ) mustn’t blame the country’s financial crisis as the only causalty factor of Mexico’s poverty. I believe our poverty is ancestral, not only in the economic aspects but in all aspects which integrate Mexicans. With or without a crisis we are a poor and ignorant people. Perhaps because of this we shouldn’t worry, after all we haven’t got much to lose.
———-
 
El Porvenir  (Monterrey, Nuevo Leon)  1/27/09
 
Local area officials found the bodies of four men who had been gagged and repeatedly shot at a ranch by the town called Dr. Gonzalez. (just N.E. of Monterrey)
———-
 
Prensa Libre  (Guatemala City, Guatemala)  1/27/09
 
Guatemala’s immigration officials reported that 1,670 Guatemalans have now arrived back in that country since the start of 2009 after having been deported from the United States. Last year’s total was said to be 28,059.
———-
 
El Comercio  (Lima, Peru)  1/27/09
 
Five travelers aiming to depart from Peru were arrested within 24 hours in separate incidents at Lima’s airport. All five were carrying amounts of cocaine varying from 2.5 to 8 kilos.
Local officials also seized 122 kilos of cocaine hidden in a load of frozen fish about to be shipped out from Callao, Lima’s seaport. UN offices estimate that Peru has the potential to produce 290 metric tons of cocaine. Local officials believe 80% of the drug leaves the country by sea.
———-
 
El Universal  (Mexico City)  1/27/09
 
Seventeen persons were assassinated “organized crime style” in the state of Chihuahua overnight into Tuesday. Five of the murders took place in Ciudad Juarez, four in Chihuahua City (note: later raised to five in another paper) and two others in Nuevo Casas Grande plus one each in Camargo and Chinipas.
Ciudad Juarez is now up to 116 homicides for the month.
A reader’s commentary following this story :
“This is not news anymore !”
———–
 
Expreso  (Hermosillo, Sonora)  1/27/09
 
Six assault rifles plus an unspecified number of clips and amount of ammunition were all found by Mex. federal police under a crypt at the El Mezquite Ranch, in the San Carlos area of Nogales, Sonora (See related photograph).
———–
 
– end of report –