Salvadorans Gird for Losses as Special Status in U.S. Ends

The streets of this tiny village are paved with dollars from Los Angeles and other U.S. cities where Salvadorans live, work and prop up their home country’s economy.

Most houses have tiled floors, iron gates and fresh coats of pastel paint. There is an ambulance. The children wear shoes and ride bicycles, and the church was built with money sent from some of the estimated 1 million Salvadorans who fled the country during 12 years of civil war and now reside in the United States.

“I do not know what we would do without the help,” said Leonor Guzman de Arauz, 62, whose six children live in Southern California.

As the Clinton Administration prepares to end a special protected-status program for Salvadorans, officials and residents are assessing the impact on towns like this and on a nation that is exceedingly dependent on remittances.

The temporary program had allowed many Salvadorans to remain and work in the United States because war raged at home. Now the war is over.

Although massive deportations are not expected with the end of the program, Salvadoran officials fear that any sizable return of its citizens will deal a devastating blow to a delicate postwar economy.

“If there’s barely enough work for those of us here, what will those who come back do?” bricklayer Jose Oscar Rivera asked.

“They’ll come to be hungry like the rest of us,” said his wife, Juana Bonilla, seated at a tamale stand in front of their small home in San Jose la Paz Arriba.

Bonilla is a member of the town’s improvements committee, which channels the money that comes in regularly from relatives in the United States. Towns throughout El Salvador have similar committees with partner organizations in U.S. cities, and the money goes to repairing roads and remodeling homes and schools.

Many Salvadorans also use the money for such basics as paying light and water bills and buying food, or for luxuries such as television sets and videocassette recorders. Some invest, using the income to set up small mom-and-pop markets or other businesses.

The Salvadoran Central Bank estimates that remittances this year will top $1 billion, almost as much as all exports income combined.

Studies have shown that more than a third of all Salvadoran families have at least one relative in the United States, and remittances account for 60% of the income of families who receive them.

More worrisome than the potential decline in dollars, say Salvadoran officials, is the capacity of the domestic job market to absorb an influx of workers.

Also, El Salvador’s social services and infrastructure, such as electrical grids, hospitals and roads, were destroyed during the war and are only slowly being rebuilt.

Large numbers of new residents would strain the services and utilities, Salvadoran officials say.

“We are not prepared to take these immigrants,” Foreign Minister Oscar Santamaria said. “That is why we ask the U.S. government to understand that the Salvadoran people are trying to consolidate the pacification process. If our petition is not heard, it will jeopardize our national stability.”

“You would have here a social problem worse than the war,” union leader Rosario Acosta said.

For 12 years, leftist guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front battled U.S.-backed forces to a virtual standstill.

U.N.-brokered peace accords in 1992 ended the brutal conflict, which claimed tens of thousands of lives and propelled a massive exodus, primarily to Los Angeles, Houston and Washington. Families were scattered as Salvadorans fled in search of peace and economic opportunity.

Because of U.S. support for Salvadoran governments, it was difficult for Salvadorans to obtain political asylum. After years of legal wrangling, immigrant advocates in 1990 won congressional approval for the temporary program that immediately gave almost 200,000 Salvadorans the legal right to reside and work in the United States.

The measure was extended several times, but it expires Dec. 31 and is not expected to win renewal, despite pleas from Salvadoran President Armando Calderon Sol and others.

In fact, the lobbying effort behind an extension was intense, if unsuccessful. It saw a rare uniting of forces that included the right-wing government, the leftist former guerrillas and a wide array of American advocate groups.

The U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Alan Flanigan, also argued for an extension, saying ending the protected status will have dire consequences by driving Salvadorans underground and reducing the income they provide families in El Salvador.

“Many families who receive remittances reside . . . in the principal ex-conflict zones where the greatest civil war fighting took place,” Flanigan stated in a cable to the U.S. State Department earlier this year.

“These are among the poorest areas in El Salvador. The effect of significantly reduced remittances would be economically disastrous for these areas. In fact, it would probably lead to increased illegal immigration to the U.S.”

Some immigrant advocates and leftist politicians here contend that it was U.S. policy that drove Salvadorans to the United States in the first place, and therefore Washington ought to give El Salvador a break.

But others in Congress and from organizations that want to restrict immigration argue that the special status was always intended to be temporary, and the time for it to end has come.

The dependence on dollars from the United States has also had plenty of negative effects on the Salvadoran economy. It has created a culture of dependency among many Salvadorans, who find it easier to await the regular remittance check than to get a job.

While the infusion of cash enables El Salvador to cover its huge trade deficit, it also distorts the local economy by inflating housing and land prices and overvaluing the colon, the national monetary unit.

For ordinary Salvadorans, however, such distortions seem to be dwarfed by the way in which the money helps people get by.

“Entire families make ends meet with those dollars,” said Rosita Gonzalez, a homemaker in San Jose la Paz Arriba. Seated in her well-appointed home, with two wall-chime clocks and a full set of living-room furniture, Gonzalez fretted that even though the war is over, a tidal wave of crime continues to make El Salvador a dangerous place.

“There is no war, but we live under threat,” she said. “We are not at peace.”

After 10 years painting houses in Marin County, Hector Manuel Romero returned to nearby Santiago Nonualco, the town that is the county seat for this area, where he lives off the interest from money he banked, plus income from renting two homes he owns.

“When I left here, I had nothing,” he said.

Pedro Alidio Vasquez, the mayor of Santiago, calculated that at least half of the county’s 67,000 residents depend on income from relatives living in the States, some legal, some illegal and most in Southern California.

“The majority seek out Los Angeles because of the language,” he said.

Vasquez said he expects to inaugurate in January a park dedicated to Santiagoans living in Los Angeles. He was interviewed at the Santiago stadium during a Saturday morning soccer game. Inside the stadium, graffiti covering the green walls announced the presence of “Mara Salvatrucha,” a notorious Los Angeles gang made up of Salvadorans.

Vasquez said he is mortified that many of his compatriots may be forced underground or deported. In the best of times, about 40 area residents travel to the United States each month, he said. But already county officials are beginning to notice a drop-off.

“If the remittances are cut, it would be like having a business that was in the red every month,” he said. “There would be a huge damage for the whole county.

“The Americans have always helped us,” Vasquez continued. “If they can’t send aid, then at least they should help us by keeping our brothers there.”