Finding little money left to send home

When immigrants move here, they are expected to earn enough money to also support families back in their homeland. The present economy makes it hard to support two families and the ones back home can't understand it. DP

Immigrants' families in native countries expect help, but it’s getting harder

By JEMIMAH NOONOO, Houston Chronicle

Elizabeth Anane-Sekyere works 13-hour shifts, six days a week. Her husband pastors a small church for modest pay. Together, they’re paying for a mortgage, three college tuitions and a growing 16-year-old.

But like immigrant couples across the Houston area, the Anane-Sekyeres have to stretch their paychecks even further. Recession or no, nieces and nephews back home are depending on them.

“Your children are going to school here,” explained Anane-Sekyere, a nurse’s aide originally from Ghana, “and they (relatives) are schooling back there.”

As money gets tighter, immigrant families in the U.S. are finding they can’t always cover everything that is expected of them. The Bank of Mexico recently said that remittances to that country fell last year — a phenomenon unprecedented in the three decades the bank has tracked such payments.

But the local area is home to an estimated 200,000 African immigrants as well, and they arrive with the same cultural tradition. They feel the same pressure from relatives who can’t believe the land of milk and honey would ever run short of cash.

“If you do not take care of your family, people (back home) will talk all kinds of rubbish about you,” Anane-Sekyere said. Sitting on her sofa in southwest Houston, she mimicked the busybodies: “So-and-so is driving a fancy car, and his mother is sick, walking through the village.”

So Anane-Sekyere clips coupons and puts homemade signs over the sink reminding her kids to use less hot water.
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