Most Latin immigrants had modest home ties

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- Most Latino immigrants in the United States maintain only modestly strong ties to their native lands, a survey released Thursday found.

The Pew Institute said only 9 percent of immigrants polled regularly maintain telephone contact with relatives in Latin America, make regular visits home, and send money to family members.

The majority, 63 percent, do one or two of those activities on a regular basis while 28 percent have little or no contact with the folks back in the old country.

The institute said its research concluded that the longer Latinos are in the United States, the less tightly they are bound to their native lands.

Pew's 2006 National Survey of Latinos collected data on a variety of topics from 2,000 adult immigrants between June 5 and July 3, 2006 and the poll had a 3.8 percentage-point margin of error.