LAT: Falling Home Construction Market in USA Hurts Mexico?

In Sunday’s paper, the L.A.Times has a piece that mourns a downturn of a portion of Mexico’s economy and, naturally, the Times blames the USA for it. How is it that the USA is responsible for this downturn? New home construction is down in California and illegal Mexicans have found themselves out of work because of it. This means that these out of work Mexicans cannot send US dollars to Mexico and, therefore, Mexican families back home are finding less money in their family incomes.

So, according to the L.A.Times, the US is unfairly hurting Mexican families because of a downturn in new home building in the USA. Why are we Americans so darn mean to those innocent illegals, anyway? For shame you selfish Americans!

MEXICO CITY — When California's housing market was booming, Lucretia Diaz could feel the good vibrations 2,200 miles away in her rural hamlet in southern Mexico.

Her husband, Carlos Romero, an illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, wired her $600 a month from his labors hanging drywall and pounding roof nails. The remittances bought meat for the tacos, new sneakers for the kids and a few extras for the family's home in tiny Juquila, Oaxaca.

No more. With U.S. homebuilding in the dumps, Romero is working sporadically and sending little money. Diaz and her three young boys are eating rice and beans. She is watching every centavo.

So are economists who track this crucial southward flow of currency. They are worried by what they see.

Why these purported economists aren’t “worried” that this flow of US dollars exists in the first place is anybody’s guess.

Remittances are the financial lifeblood for millions of Mexican families and a critical source of foreign exchange for their government. The $23 billion that maids, cooks and gardeners sent home last year — almost all from the U.S. — topped the amount that multinationals invested in Mexico. But fallout from the U.S. construction industry, which employs one in five Hispanic immigrants, is now rippling south of the border. Growth in remittances to Mexico has slowed to a trickle.

Nice euphemism they have there; “remittances”. It SHOULD be theft, but the L.A.Times dresses it up by calling the flow of US dollars over the border with a benign sounding “remittances”.

So, are we supposed to read this article and feel bad for these Mexicans who are receiving illegal monies from the USA? Are we supposed to damn ourselves for how horrible we are for stopping these oh so helpful “remittances” with our selfish desire not to build new homes?

Gosh we evil Americans are just dastardly, aren’t we?

The entire report is written as if it is all a common market analysis, as if the discussion here is a downturn in business related issues. But, it isn’t. We are talking about illegal aliens making money against the law that is then bled out of the country, harming our own economy.

Catch this paragraph:

After increasing an average of just more than 23 percent a year since 2000, remittances for the first two months of 2007 were just 5.5 percent ahead of the same period last year, according to Mexico's central bank. The figure peaked in May 2006 at $2.3 billion and has drifted downward ever since.

It’s as if we are talking new cars stats, or purchases of washing machines and the so-called "Big ticket items" taking a downturn here. The Times is couching this discussion as if this illegal activity is a legitimate market analysis instead of an illegal leeching of cash out of our own economy.

Again, this is money basically stolen by illegal immigrants flowing out of our country and into a foreign nation.

And, it isn’t just Mexico “feeling the effect” says the Times.

Mexico isn't the only country feeling the effect. Growth in money wired to Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and other Latin American nations has followed the housing market down.

But the L.A.Times didn’t stop with our meanness with the construction industry. We are also harming Mexico’s “remittances” with our intensified attention to border security.

But with more U.S. agents patrolling the border and fewer construction jobs waiting on the other side, Newman said, Mexico may be in for a bumpier landing this time. He projects 3.3 percent economic growth for Mexico this year, down from 4.8 percent in 2006.

It is infuriating that the L.A.Times acts as if this illegal flow of US dollars south is a legitimate part of Mexico’s economy.

Obviously the Times feels we Americans should feel shame that Mexicans and other nationalities cannot come here illegally as easily as they once did. Why, our increased interest in our own national security and upholding our laws is frightening those poor, poor, innocent people.

Analyst Gwenn Bezard, who follows the money-transfer industry, said he believes that tougher border enforcement is crimping the flow of new arrivals to the U.S. while employment raids and deportations have spooked undocumented workers living there. He said some are avoiding places where immigrants congregate, such as major money-wiring chains.

"A lot of people are just staying home because they are afraid of being caught," said Bezard, research director at Aite Group, a Boston-based financial services consulting business. "The political climate has a lot to do with it."

This L.A.Times piece is a perfect example of the open borders type of thinking that is popular with the extreme left. With this thinking we should not be “allowed” to secure our border, we are mean to enforce our labor laws, and we have no right to impose any requirements for foreign nationals to become citizens of the USA.

The most ridiculous part of this report is that not once in the piece does the L.A.Times scold the Mexican government for the failed policies that causes it to rely on these “remittances” to float its economy. Nowhere is the onus for the solvency of the Mexican economy placed on Mexicans back in Mexico. No, it’s all the USA’s fault.

I have news for you L.A.Times. Mexico’s economic woe is NOT the fault of fewer construction projects in California.

It’s because Mexico is a corrupt, third world nation and the USA has NO responsibility to assure that these "remittances" help float them.