Fewer wire transfers concern Hispanic store owners

VIRGINIA BEACH

On the shelves at La Tapatia, a Hispanic specialty store on Virginia Beach Boulevard, Monica Montes stocks Spanish-language DVDs, tamale flour, Goya soda and a variety of staples.

But her storefront advertisements hint at one of Montes' most important sources of business: electronic money transfers.

"Envios de Dinero" - "send money" - to Mexico, Central and South America, and "el Caribe," the Caribbean, urges a poster for Sigue, a wire transfer company. Other ads hang for two other transfer firms, MoneyGram and Vigo.

Hispanic temporary workers prefer the security and speed of wire transfers for sending money to family in their homelands, and mom-and-pop stores such as La Tapatia happily act as transfer agents, earning a commission for each transaction.

But that business has shrivelled as the recession has slashed jobs, particularly in the construction industry that employs many temporary workers.

Before the economy nose-dived, customers wired about $15,000 a week via La Tapatia, earning Montes $600 to $700 in commissions as an agent for four different transfer services.

In wire transfers, customers typically hand over in cash the sum they want to send overseas. The agent certifies to the wire company that the cash has been received and deposits the money in a bank account for retrieval later by the transfer service.

With the recession, transfers have fallen to $15,000 a month at La Tapatia, and Montes said her weekly commissions have dropped to about $300. Each transfer costs the customer about $10.

"People don't have work, and they don't use the wire to send money for anything," said Montes, who's been in business for 12 years.

Augusto Ratti-Angula, publisher of El Eco de Virginia, a local Spanish newspaper, said many small stores across Hampton Roads are hurting from the drop-off in wire transfer s.

"That is extremely low now," he said.

There are at least a dozen Hispanic grocery stores of various sizes in South Hampton Roads, mostly independently owned and operated.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that as recently as 2007 there were about 45,000 Hispanics in South Hampton Roads, up from 33,318 in 2000. Their places of ancestry include Mexico, Puerto Rico and Honduras.

In 2009, Hispanic migrant workers in the United States will remit $42 billion, 11 percent less than the previous year, the Inter-American Development Bank forecast last month.

A survey this year showed that 12 percent of Hispanic migrant workers in the United States were unemployed, according to Inter-American Dialogue, a non profit think-tank. Many more reported reduced work hours.

Hector Lopez, a 29-year-old from Mexico's Oaxaca state, is among local migrants still working.

On a recent morning, he laid a short stack of $100 and $20 bills on the counter at La Botica Hispana, a store in Norfolk's Wards Corner section. A clerk there said her volume of wire transfers was flat.

With a friend translating, Lopez said he'd been in the United States a year and that while construction jobs were scarce, he had steady work as a roofer in Norfolk. He has sent $1,000 to his mother every three months.

In contrast, at La Tapatia, Montes said some customers wired as little as $30 at a time, a sign of their withered wages.

A few miles away at La Tienda on Boggs Avenue in Virginia Beach, shopkeeper Juan Aybar said his ability to handle money transfers is good for his business as a whole.

"If you come to make a transfer, you also stop to get some rice, some beans," Aybar said.

Conversely, the drop in wire transfers also has pulled down those incidental sales, said Aybar, who bought the shop this year.

Aybar, who earns $300 to $400 a month in wire fees, said he expects the economy and his wire transfer trade to make a comeback.

"I know it's going to be better," he said. "I know it's not going to get better tomorrow."

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com