It was not even after the stock exchange was losing 777 points in only one day that the Americans realized that the economic crisis that faces the country is real. The multimillionaire plan to rescue to the financial industry received a little more of support on the part of the taxpayers when they realized that for very bad that sounds, non-doing anything might turn out to be worse. Many saw how overnight there got lost thousands of dollars of his accounts of retirement.

Practically, all in the United States, young people or old men; rich or poor, they have been somehow or other one affected by the economic crisis. But in accordance with a recent study of the Hispanic Center Pew, the problem has affected in a disproportionate way the Hispanics, who shape 14 per cent of the labor force in the country.

In the first trimester of 2008 the unemployment level for the Latin immigrants was 7.5 per cent, mainly for the depression in the industry of construction in which approximately 250.000 Latin Americans lost his works. In accordance with the study, 52 per cent of the Hispanics in age to be employed at this nation are immigrant.

During an economic crisis as that it faces our country, the first works in getting lost are those that immigrants occupy with few skills, as in the industry of service, of hotel trade, in restaurants and factories. Those that think about how to save money dismiss to his domestic help or to the gardeners. The day labourers spend the entire day to themselves in a corner waiting fruitlessly that someone they of work.

This has an effect it dominated in the everyday life of the immigrants. On not having had work or having gained less money, it is to them difficult to expire with his expenses, including the high cost of food and gasoline. His complicated situation is reflected in the reduction in the money that they send to his relatives in his fatherlands. The remittances of the United States are an important currencies source in most of the Latin-American countries. In Mexico, during August, these lowered 12 per cent as regards the same month one year ago, according to the Central Bank. In Mexico the remittances are the second currencies source after the oil.

The expert in finance Julie Stav thinks that also there is a disproportionate number of Hispanics who are being affected by the mortgage crisis. A study realized by his company in Los Angeles shows that a tall percentage of Hispanics received them sadly famous loans of risk that have caused part of the problem and that are leading so many people to losing his houses.

In his study, Stav discovered that half of the people who was losing his houses had not come to a bank to look for help. That is due to the fact that many obtained his loans of the same persons who sold to them his houses. "We got into loans that we did not understand, with the people who could not endorse them and we are not fighting with the result correctly", he said.

"Most of the people with whom we speak did not understand the concept of loans of adaptable money-market rate", he added. As result they did not know why any minute now his mortgage payments were rising from approximately $ 1.500 to any more than $ 2.300, for example, and simply already they could not pay them. This absence of information in its own language of such a complex topic has many scared Hispanic families and without knowing how to fight with this financial crisis.

That probably has something to do with another find of the Hispanic Center Pew in which half of the interviewed Hispanics said to feel pessimistic on his situation in the United States. Julie Stav thinks that the fundamental error that the Hispanics have committed is not to realize that the American dream is not only "to have proper house, but to be able to pay it". For them, the sleep has turned into nightmare.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.