Too broke to buy a ticket home, Valley's immigrant day laborers just hang on

These workers used to make enough money to send home and support their families there. Now they can't even make enough to pay for a ticket to go home. DP

By Tony Castro, Staff Writer

They are down and out in the United States and homesick for Guatemala. And El Salvador. And Honduras. And Mexico.

And they would go back without even an American penny in their pocket if only they had enough to get home.

They are the discouraged and disillusioned Central American and Mexican day laborers who, in a sign of how hard times are in this economy, find themselves so broke they can't send much, if any, money back to loved ones they haven't seen for years.

"We have lost our reason for being here," laments Jose Perez, 42, a Guatemalan living in the San Fernando Valley who vows he will be back home by next Christmas - and wishes he could leave sooner.

"I would leave today, with just the clothes on my back, if I had the money. It wasn't that long ago that I used to put money aside to send home. Now I'm saving it in hopes that I can go back home."

Perez, who hasn't seen his wife and family in five years, is among the hundreds of day laborers who gather each morning at the same corners in various parts of the Valley, hoping to find work cleaning yards, hauling furniture, painting houses or doing light construction.

But in an increasingly tight economy, homeowners are now handling many of the tasks they used to hire day laborers to perform.

"The dream I had when I left Guatemala to come to America is now gone," said Perez with a trace of bitterness.

He is not alone.
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