The flow of cash from Mexican immigrants to their families back home continues to dry up in the Sacramento area and nationwide as tough economic times and a beleaguered housing sector have taken their toll on paychecks and pocketbooks.

Locally, the movement of money south has been curtailed by the disappearance of construction jobs in a battered housing sector, a major employer of Mexican labor, said Carlos González Gutiérrez, Mexico's consul general in Sacramento.

Immigrants are "waiting for the economic crisis to go away, but they don't have the resources they had before and are sending less," González Gutiérrez said. "What the global (economic) crisis has shown us is that the host society and the homeland move in sync."

Those who have found new work have moved from the higher-paying building trades to lower-paying jobs, he said, reducing the amount they are able to send home.

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