Nevada No. 14 in money going to Latin America

Thursday, May 20, 2004 | 9:56 a.m.

Nevada ranks in the top 15 states in the amount of money its residents born in Latin America send home to their countries of origin, according to a study released Monday.

The study, done by the Inter-American Development Bank, estimates that $447 million will leave Nevada and end up in different Latin American countries this year, ranking the state 14th nationwide in that category.

Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based research group, said the quantity of remittances, or money sent out of country, is a sign of economic growth in Nevada, and particularly indicates the importance of Hispanic immigrants in that growth.

He said "Las Vegas fits into a pattern ... (of) places growing rapidly showing the Hispanic population as part of the growth.

"Cities most successful in growth have this component, and remittances are an indicator of that," he said.

According to 2003 state demographer projections, 79 percent of the state's 502,984 Hispanics, or 396,798 Hispanics, live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. That means an estimated $353 million would be sent this year from Southern Nevada to Latin America.

Suro said the hard-working, low-wage immigrant labor force has been key to Las Vegas Valley industries such as construction.

"It's a chicken and egg thing," he said. "If you didn't have the highly mobile, immigrant labor force, could you build the housing that helps fuel the growth in Las Vegas?"

At the same time, local and national analysts noted that the amount sent in remittances, while large and growing, represents a small number in terms of the overall economy for any given state and for the nation as a whole.

"It's pretty small in terms of the overall magnitude of operations," said Keith Schwer, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Schwer said the gross state product for Nevada is estimated at $79.2 billion, which makes the amount sent in remittances about half of one percent of the state's overall economic output.

"It's also small in terms of the flow of trade with these (Latin American) countries," he said.

Suro said the same thing about the estimated $30 billion in overall remittances from the United States to Latin America quoted by the Inter-American report.

"It's a fairly small amount of money in terms of the U.S. economy or even the U.S. consumer market," he said.

The study was based on surveys of 3,800 households across the nation from February to April of this year. It noted that nearly a quarter of those interviewed were U.S. citizens; almost 40 percent were legal residents, the step below citizenship; and nearly a third were undocumented immigrants.

Mike Martinez, until recently a Salt Lake Tribune columnist on immigration and chairman of Utah's Civil Rights Commission, said that making it easier for immigrants to become citizens would inevitably lower the numbers cited in the report.

"If the American government made it easier for them to become part of the melting pot, so they're not underground, they could see more of a future for themselves and their children here and would invest more in that future," he said.

Both Suro and Schwer pointed out that Latin American immigrants, regardless of their legal status, also contribute to local economies more than they might send abroad.

"Our tax economy is based on transactions, and living here, they are paying for food, clothing and shelter," Schwer said.

"As wage earners, they're really no different than anyone else when it comes to paying taxes," Suro said. "They spend much more than they send."

At the same time, Suro said, the role of the Hispanic immigrant population in the Las Vegas Valley's growth as shown by remittances includes inevitable costs.

"The rapid growth of an immigrant population always represents a burden on the local government ... the longer they stay there, the deeper roots they'll have as they build families, and five and 10 years out, the local authorities will be dealing with the need for a social services infrastructure," he said.