ASSOCIATED PRESSDecember 24, 2005
Migrants lost work due to hurricanes, struggle to send funds home
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — When Wilma swept through Southern Florida, it trampled the tulips and hibiscuses at the nursery where Leopoldo Gomez worked, as well as his hopes of sending extra money home to his family for this year's holiday fiestas. Instead of the steady nursery work, Gomez spent much of the fall looking for day jobs in construction and gardening. Gomez is among thousands of migrant workers in Florida whose families in their home countries rely on their contributions but who have little to offer this holiday season due to the year's devastating hurricane season. Experts say nationwide migrants may send more money back in 2005 due to the spike in construction jobs in areas such as New Orleans that were hit hardest by the storms, but in South Florida, agricultural advocates and workers say it is a struggle to save the cash to send home. "It's a time when many of us save money in the last months of the year to send a little extra home for the fiestas, but everyone is saying they basically only have enough for rent and to eat," said Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. On a recent December evening, Gomez joined dozens of men browsing stores along the brick-paved Washington Boulevard in the rural town of Homestead, searching for cheap items to send home to his family along with what little money he was able to save. He settled on two plastic cars and a toy keyboard for his three young boys. "I have to send them something. They are waiting for it," he said. "Usually you can send $300 home a week at this time, but now it is more like $150." The nursery industry in South Florida was among the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Wilma, with more than $1.1 billion in crop losses and structural damage from the entire hurricane season, according to the Florida Agriculture Commission. Tomato plants, cane fields and orange orchards were also crushed. All told, Florida agriculture suffered $2.2 billion in losses from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Linda Adams, associate vice president of the Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association, said she believed many nurseries were in need of more workers to help with cleanup. Gomez said initially he found some work replanting tomatoes and cleaning up at the nursery, but the hours were shorter, so he began to look elsewhere. Bolivar Baez owns Brothers Service Corp. in the southwestern town of Immokalee, where migrant farmworkers drop by in the evenings to send money home. Baez said he'd made just over 200 transfers in December, down from about 500 normally. As a result of the drop in business, the Dominican Republic native said he too would send less this year to his brothers who still live on the island. "We are just focusing on the basic expenses," Baez said. So far the countries that rely on the remittances have not reported any decreases due to the storms and some have noted increases, though final numbers for the year have not been tallied. For example, as of November, immigrants had sent nearly $3 billion dollars back to Guatemala, almost $200 million more than last year, according to the International Organization for Migration. Meanwhile Mexico's national bank reported that as of October the country had received more than $16.5 billion, up from just under $14 billion in 2004. In part the upsurge is likely to come from reconstruction efforts. In New Orleans, where thousands of Hispanic immigrants have filled jobs cleaning up debris and doing other laborious tasks, workers lined up at stores like Stop One Discount last week, clutching wads of cash to send home via Western Union. Stop One owner Hussein Jamhour said he wired roughly $30,000 this past weekend, primarily to Mexico and Honduras. "Before the storm, I'd get maybe a couple of hundred dollars for the whole week" for Western Union, Jamhour said. Immokalee Benitez said he knew of some Florida farmworkers who went to Louisiana, but many were simply looking for jobs in construction 50 miles away in Naples. That has those in the Florida agriculture industry concerned that workers may move away and not return. Getting good supply of competent workers is tough under any circumstances, said Terence McElroy, spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, but harder this year. "Some have left," he said. "We hope they don't." Gomez said he recently found work in construction in Dadeland. The work is harder than the nursery, but he's earning about $9 an hour instead of $6 and change an hour. "The family won't get that money for the holidays. I just started," he said. "But hopefully it will help next year."
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