Mexico now seeing wave of immigrants

Jaime Amaro, 39, plays with his 7-month-old son, Ian. Two and a half years after going to work at Global Telesourcing, he was able to buy a house in Monterrey. He says that would have taken “forever” in the U.S. less Jaime Amaro, 39, plays with his 7-month-old son, Ian. Two and a half years after going to work at Global Telesourcing, he was able to buy a house in Monterrey. He says that would have taken “forever” in the ... more Photo: Jerry Lara, San Antonio Express-News Photo: Jerry Lara, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Mexico now seeing wave of immigrants 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

MONTERREY, Mexico — When Pete Navarro showed up three years ago in this industrial city a few hours' drive from the border, he spoke barely a word of Spanish and hardly knew a soul.

The San Antonio resident, who went to Jay High School, lost his legal residency in December 2009 and was deported to his native Mexico. He hadn't been there since he was a child, and the only people he knew were his aunt and her family. He left his parents and two children in San Antonio.

“So when I got here, my two cousins were my best friends, because they could speak English,” Navarro said.

Navarro, 33, has taken part in a historic migration. For the first time in decades, more people are moving from the U.S. to Mexico than are coming to the U.S. from Mexico, the Pew Hispanic Center reported in April. Some, like Navarro, are deported, but the vast majority came to Mexico voluntarily, according to the report.

It can be difficult for those who come voluntarily and involuntarily. Many struggle with the language, have trouble in Mexican schools and find it difficult to integrate into Mexican society.

But they also find opportunity, often thanks to the English they learned growing up north of the Rio Grande.

It took Navarro only a few days to find an industry waiting with open arms to accept workers from the wave of more than a million people who have moved from the U.S. to Mexico in recent years: call centers.

The Monterrey call center industry employs thousands, many of them English speakers who grew up in the U.S. The city, with a population of 1.14 million and with millions more in the metro area, primarily is a manufacturing center. But in the past decade, a burgeoning call center industry has cropped up, said Roberto Fuerte, executive director of the northeast Mexico chapter of the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce.

The phone operations provide a range of services and don't all require top-flight English, so many are staffed by students from the area's several universities, Fuerte said.

But the centers provide a landing place for English-speakers marching south.

“When that Pew study came out, it was interesting to see it in an academic format,” said Bill Colton, a Washington businessman and the president of a small Monterrey call center. “But it was in no way surprising to people here.”

Colton's Global Telesourcing, where Navarro is one of about 300 employees, mostly hires people who spent their formative years in the U.S.

That means they speak excellent English, understand U.S. slang and are familiar with the products they're selling, such as Internet, cable and cellphone services. Many have worked at Monterrey's larger call centers, Colton said.

“Because the level of (sales) agent we're able to attract in Mexico is much better than the same dollars we would be able to buy in the U.S., we're a much better call center,” Colton said. “These guys you couldn't attract to work at a call center in the U.S.”

No welcome mat

That's certainly true of Navarro, who said he was making a better living as an auto mechanic, a skill he'd learned at St. Phillip's College, before he was deported.

He'd recently divorced his wife and won custody of his children in 2009 when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him at his South Side home and deported him over a pair of years-old marijuana possession charges. Now, he lives alone in Monterrey while his children remain in San Antonio with his parents.

“The fact that these guys came to my door one day, it changed my life,” Navarro said. “It flipped everything around.”

He likes working on cars, but in Mexico, it doesn't pay nearly as well as the call center. Navarro said he made about $1,200 a week in San Antonio. Today, he makes about $500, a pretty sum in most parts of Mexico, but not in Monterrey, one of the most expensive cities in the country.

His neighborhood in a suburb is quiet, Navarro said, and his small house is an upgrade from the rat-infested building he'd rented before. Monterrey sees almost daily violence from Mexico's drug war, but it's easy to miss among the millions of people. Navarro said he has come upon the aftermath of shootouts before.

One day, waiting for a train to pass while riding in a friend's car, Navarro said, he heard noises that sounded like someone was throwing rocks at the train.

“Two minutes later, the train passed by,” he said. “We started moving through the traffic. Once we got over the train tracks, there was a truck riddled with bullets and there were three or four guys dead inside of it.”

He misses the U.S., Navarro said. He's had a hard time adjusting to the culture — for one thing, personal space isn't given a premium in Mexico, he said — and he gets a hostile reaction when people on the bus hear him speaking English. But he has been able to find friends who work at Global Telesourcing and other call centers.

“Outside of this call center, I really don't have a life,” he said. “I don't know any Spanish and I don't have friends outside of here.”

He's not alone in his struggles. Many return migrants struggle when they leave the U.S. for Mexico, said Ted Hamann, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln who has studied return migration — particularly students who are trying to enter school. Mexico doesn't have a way to effectively integrate the English-speaking children of its citizens into the school system, Hamann said.

And the number of people facing these problems is growing. The Pew study found that from 2005 to 2010, about 1.4 million people moved from Mexico to the U.S., but during those five years slightly more Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born children moved south.

“The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico's birth rates and broader economic conditions in Mexico,” the report states.

Young people living illegally in the U.S. or immigrants with undocumented family members often see a dim economic future after high school, said Nolvia Cortez, a professor in the English-language teaching program at the Universidad de Sonora. Add in the hostility they see in state laws targeting immigrants, fear of deportation and lack of an opportunity to go to college, and moving to Mexico sometimes looks better than remaining trapped in the American lower class.

“So they decide to leave these shadowed lives and try to start something new in Mexico,” Cortez said.

But immigrants who grew up in the U.S. often have mixed feelings about returning to Mexico, Hamann said.

“We have documented a lot of interest in returning to the U.S. and to continuing studies in the U.S., but that interest isn't quite universal,” he wrote in an email.

Dream reversed

Jaime Amaro, 39, has climbed the ranks at Global Telesourcing in the past three years. A green-card holder like Navarro, he bought a house this summer in a middle-class suburb big enough for him, his wife, their new baby and his stepdaughter. The light fixtures in the house came from Home Depot, Amaro shops at H-E-B and on his day off he watches NFL Sunday Ticket.

It's the American Dream, in reverse.

“Here, (a sales) agent starts from scratch, and in 2½ years, they can buy a house,” Amaro said. “I was able to buy a house in a private community. It would have taken me forever in the U.S. to have that kind of opportunity.”

Colton, the Global Telesourcing president, said that's what makes his company successful. In the U.S., call center jobs are at the low end of the economic spectrum. In Monterrey and other parts of Mexico, English- language call centers are competitive with maquiladora pay. And for shops that handle high-end sales in English, the compensation puts employees squarely in Mexico's middle class.

Amaro went to high school in Rosenberg, near Houston, and attended ITT Technical Institute. Five years ago, he left the States to help his brother run a car repair shop in the Monterrey area.

Since then, he met a woman and married, found a job at Global Telesourcing and now is director of operations at the call center.

“When I first moved to Mexico, there were a lot of things I missed from the States, from the food or you just get used to a certain lifestyle,” Amaro said. “But I knew if I worked hard I could have that lifestyle. And it's true, I have it.”

Difficult adjustment

For family members of those who find employment in Monterrey, the transition can be more difficult.

Sandra Lisbeth Ibarra should be starting her freshman year of high school, but instead she spends her days reading anime books on her iPad.

Sandra, 15, was born in San Antonio. She went to Bonham Academy and was an A and B student, she said.

But a year ago, seeking better economic opportunities for her father and educational opportunities for her brother, Ibarra's family moved to Monterrey.

Her father got a job at his family's auto shop, and her brother has a job as a telemarketer, but Ibarra, her mom and younger sister are stuck at home.

They left a pair of new vehicles in San Antonio because they'd be targets for a car-jacking in their rough neighborhood near downtown Monterrey. The family regularly hears gunfire at night, Sandra said.

Sandra doesn't speak Spanish so she can't go to school, and she doesn't know how to navigate the city.

“At first I thought it was going to be OK, but we spent a year here and we haven't advanced at all,” Sandra said. “I really want to go back because I don't want to stay here anymore, but I don't want to leave my mom. We don't have a car. We don't have anything to go out, only my dad's truck, and he takes it to work.”

Kenia Hernandez said she felt the same way when she arrived in Monterrey two years ago.

At age 16, she wanted to be back with her friends in Colorado, and live the middle-class existence that allowed her parents to purchase whatever she wanted, even though her family didn't have papers. She tried to sign up for school, but was told she'd have to go back to seventh grade. Hernandez said she is uncomfortable speaking Spanish to anyone but her family.

“Since my dad was still over there, I would call him and cry and say I wanted to go back,” she said. “I could see on Facebook what my friends were doing.”

When her father left his construction job in the States and joined her and her mother in Monterrey, Hernandez realized she'd have to get a job.

“Now it's harder, now that my dad's over here. He was making $1,000 a week, but now he's making 1,000 pesos (less than $100),” she said.

At 18, she's now the chief wage-earner for her family and a top seller at Global Telesourcing. Hernandez attends school on the weekends and said she will graduate next summer. She's not that interested in moving back to the U.S. anymore, she said.

“Everybody knows that English is the biggest opportunity you can have right now in Mexico, even if you don't have high school (education),” she said.

Navarro, the San Antonio auto mechanic who was deported, isn't as committed to Mexico.

He could afford a house, he said, but prefers to rent and take the bus to work. He's living on the bare necessities, trying to find a way back to the U.S.

“It's like the saying, home is where your heart's at,” Navarro said. “My heart is with my two kids and they're in San Antonio.”

jbuch@express-news.net