U.S. housing slump hits home - As construction jobs drop off, immigrant workers’ families to the south are feeling the pinch.

“When California’s housing market was booming, Lucretia Diaz could feel the good vibrations 2,200 miles away in her rural hamlet in southern Mexico.

Her husband, Carlos Romero, an illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, wired her $600 a month from his labors hanging drywall and pounding shingles. The remittances bought meat for tacos, sneakers for the kids and a few extras for the family’s home in tiny Juquila, Oaxaca.

No more. With U.S. home building in the dumps, Romero is working sporadically and sending little money. Diaz and her three young boys are eating rice and beans. She is watching every centavo.”

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