Fears of recession, terrorism send them back to homelands

                      BY TATSHA ROBERTSON
                      The Boston Globe

                      DURHAM, N.C. - On Sept. 11, Benjamin Morales quickly decided it was going to be even tougher to find
                      employment and make a life here. So on that very day, the 60-year-old Morales, jobless and nearly
                      broke, caught a Greyhound bus back to his native Mexico.

                      Countless Mexicans like Morales, either undocumented workers or holders of green cards, have come to
                      the United States in the past decade and found work cooking suppers in the finest restaurants in
                      Raleigh, N.C., hacking pork shoulders on hog farms in Iowa or taking in laundry for guests in a new
                      five-star hotel in Utah.

                      But as the economy they helped to grow began to decline, so did their jobs and so did their dreams.
                      Facing layoffs, a bleak economic outlook and tighter enforcement of immigration laws, hundreds of
                      thousands of Latino immigrants are abandoning their hopes of building a life in America and returning to
                      the homes they left behind, say some of those who work with them.

                      JUST A DREAM

                      ''They are finding out that the American dream is only a dream,'' said Ivan Parra, director of Durham's El
                      Centro Hispano, a community service organization.

                      There are no official numbers on this movement, partly because it is so recent and partly because many
                      of the migrants entered the country illegally. Some of those who now are leaving might return to the
                      United States when conditions improve. But social workers and economists say there is an
                      unmistakable flow out of this country.

                      According to the National Migration Institute, a Mexican government agency, more than 350,000
                      Mexicans returned home in the two months after Sept. 11. Felipe Preciado, the U.S. commissioner on
                      migration, recently estimated that two million Mexicans would go home from November to January.

                      Latino immigrants have historically returned home when the U.S. economy soured. But there are
                      significant differences from the recession a decade ago, said Robert Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic
                      Center, which, along with researchers from Princeton University, Columbia University and the University
                      of Arizona, issued a recent study on the recession's impact on Latinos.

                      Suro said that thousands of immigrants who began leaving gateway cities like Los Angeles and
                      Houston in the 1990s settled down in towns like Postville, Iowa; Dalton, Ga.; and Durham, N.C., where
                      low-wage jobs were plentiful and housing was cheap.

                      Unlike earlier waves of immigrants, the new arrivals put down roots and transformed communities
                      across the Northeast, South and Midwest.

                      Spanish-language newspapers were started in North Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas. The Tar Heel
                      State's Latino population soared in the 1990s from 77,000 to 400,000, the nation's largest percentage
                      increase. These days, 25 percent of the babies born at the University of North Carolina Hospital are
                      Latino, said Jim Johnson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

                      Many Latinos held jobs in manufacturing, which has been the first sector of the economy to feel the
                      downturn, said Suro. As a result, Johnson and others said, more and more immigrants in manufacturing
                      states like North Carolina feel there is no place to go but back to their native countries.

                      The sudden movement has left holes in their adopted communities. Apartment managers are struggling
                      to fill vacancies, while products sit on the shelves of ethnic grocery stores.

                      In Chattanooga, Tenn., social worker Matthew Baez said that 200 to 400 Latinos leave his city every
                      week to return to Latin America.

                      In Durham, Parra said that shortly after Sept. 11, 15 percent of clients at his community service program
                      were leaving or considering returning home because they feared terrorist attacks or because they
                      couldn't find jobs. Purchases of bus tickets from Charlotte and Raleigh to the Mexican border were up
                      nearly 40 percent from last year, according to community leaders and a bus company employee.

                      STRONG TIES

                      Susan Eckstein, professor of sociology at Boston University, said that while newer Latino immigrants
                      intended to stay in the United State, they maintained strong ties to their homelands. When faced with
                      bleak prospects, she said, many may have decided that the money they saved and the skills they
                      acquired in America can be better invested back home.

                      ''Some have already left, or they are starting to sell their things,'' said James Yapias, a member of the
                      Governor's Hispanic Advisory Council in Salt Lake City, Utah. ``I know five Venezuelans who sold
                      everything they had to go back to their country.''

                      In Salt Lake City, undocumented workers are feeling pressure related to security concerns for next
                      month's Winter Olympics. Last month, 69 Latinos at Salt Lake City International Airport were indicted on
                      charges of using false Social Security numbers. Another 200 were fired from such high-security jobs.

                      In Chattanooga, immigrants were alarmed last month by an indictment alleging that executives of
                      Tyson Foods, the nation's largest poultry processor, conspired to smuggle illegal immigrants to work at
                      15 plants.

                      Baez, who works with Esperanza Del Barrio in Chattanooga, said that nervous immigrants come in his
                      office every day and that many are deciding they don't want to live in America anymore.

                      Some worry that a war could break out in the United States or that they will be drafted by the military
                      or detained by Immigration and Naturalization Service officials, he said.

                      ECONOMIC FEARS

                      In Durham, Silvia Reyes, 40, simply fears that the economy in North Carolina won't improve. Standing
                      outside the Latino Community Credit Union, the native of Mexico said that she had worked in a nearby
                      factory for several years before she was laid off.

                      If things don't improve, said Reyes, speaking through an interpreter, she may return to Mexico.

                      Morales, a carpenter, followed relatives to North Carolina about a year ago and decided to put down
                      roots.

                      ''But there were no jobs, and when the two planes crashed'' he went home, Morales said.

                      Family members are urging him to give it another try. But Morales said he is not sure things will get
                      better.