After Sept. 11, many Hispanic immigrants are going home

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Posted 11:43AM on Wednesday, January 23, 2002

DURHAM, N.C. - Fredy Banegas sat patiently in his clean white shirt and blue jeans as an administrator at El Centro Hispano helped him fill out a job application. It had been nearly three months since he got his clothes dirty from working at a Durham construction site. That was before Banegas and a dozen of his Hispanic co-workers were laid off. The downturn in the economy and the aftershocks of Sept. 11 have affected through nearly every segment of North Carolina's population. But they have hit the state's Hispanic immigrants particularly hard. Not only are the jobs disappearing, but suspicions of immigrants seem to be running higher, and the state has tightened the motor-vehicle regulations that made it easy for illegal residents to obtain ID cards. As a result, some Hispanic immigrants are going back to their homeland. The number of Hispanics in North Carolina soared from 77,000 to 379,000 in the past decade, giving the state the fastest-growing Hispanic population in the nation. With the state's economy booming, many of them found work on farms and textile mills or landed jobs in gardening, landscaping, housekeeping, maintenance at hotels, motels and apartments. There are no statistics yet to show how many Hispanics have left since Sept. 11, and officials say there has been no mass departure. But interviews at social agencies, churches and apartments show that many Hispanics are finding it increasingly difficult to continue living here. The Latino Community Credit Union said the number of people wiring money home to their families has dropped as much as 40 percent since September. Several Hispanic food markets are seeing sales declines of up to 50 percent compared with last fall. And sales of charter bus tickets from the Raleigh and Charlotte areas to the Mexican border are up 20 percent to 40 percent compared with this time last year. "Many of us who lost jobs have run out of savings and can no longer wire money home to our families," Banegas said through an interpreter on a recent morning. He has a sister and mother in Honduras to whom he has not sent money in four months. "Some of us are running out of options." Ivan Parra, director of Durham's El Centro Hispano, said his office has been flooded with calls and visits from people seeking assistance since the attacks. His office is seeing up to 100 people a day about job, medical or loan assistance. Parra estimated 15 percent of his clients have either left or are planning to return to their home countries because they cannot find work. Many also are afraid of another terrorist attack. "They tell me that they came here to improve their lives and do well for themselves, not to die. They say, `If I'm going to die, I want to do it at home in my own country,"' Parra said. The economy in North Carolina was weakening well before Sept. 11. Manufacturing and textile factories hit by competition from Asia have laid off workers by the thousands over the past year. But the downturn has since carried over into construction and the service industries. Another obstacle for Hispanics since Sept. 11 has been employers' increasing fears of all immigrants, Parra said. "Many employers don't want to hire people who look different or who don't speak English," he said. "Suddenly, everyone is scared that anyone who looks different is a terrorist." At the same time, Congress has put the issue of amnesty aside in favor of tighter border security -- not exactly comforting news to the estimated 150,000 illegal Mexican immigrants living in North Carolina. And under a new state law that went into effect Nov. 1, applicants for a driver's license or ID card must now prove their residency and have a Social Security number or tax-identification number. "A lot of people don't have Social Security numbers, so now they can't get IDs here," said Veronica Zambrano, office manager of Casa Guadalupe of Catholic Social Services in Winston-Salem. "It's nearly impossible to get a check cashed without license or ID." Victor Guzman, president of Charlotte's Spanish Center of Business and Language, said the changes in laws and attitudes have taken a toll on the families who moved here intending to make North Carolina home. "People came here because the economy was thriving and they felt welcome. Now the economy is not as good and feelings about immigration have changed," Guzman said. "It does affect the mentality of this community. How could it not?" Some state officials say the migration happens every winter and they expect many Hispanics will come back in the spring. "Crops here are out of season, so they go to Florida or back home to spend Christmas with their families," said Nolo Martinez, director of Hispanic affairs for Gov. Mike Easley. "I expect we will see many return in April." But Mexico's National Migration Institute reported that more than 350,000 Mexican citizens had returned from the United States in September and October, an increase of 9 percent from the same period last year.