Remittances drop in sagging economy

MEXICO CITY, April 18 (UPI) -- Remittance money sent from migrants to families in Mexico has dropped steeply in 2008 on U.S. job losses and foreclosures, sources told The Washington Post.

Transfers of money -- after oil exports, the second largest source of foreign money for Mexico -- dropped 7 percent in January, the newspaper reported.

Carlos Trujillo Landeros, 76, from the Mexican village of Ermita de Guadalupe, said his three sons -- two in Las Vegas, one in Sacramento -- used to send him at least $400 a month. But, all of them have had work-hours reduced and one lost a home to foreclosure, the report said.

Now, he receives less than $50 a month, it said.

As the money sent to Mexican families declines, the growing poverty there prompts more Mexicans to cross the border, even if jobs are increasingly scarce in the United States.

"It is a vicious, perverse circle," University of Zacatecas economics demographer Juan Manuel Padilla told the Post. "Work opportunities here are non-existent, so this is going to cause more migration to the United States, even though it is getting harder to find work over there."