“Everyday, the dollar is less and less,” said Marcela Vasquez, an employee at a tiny shop on 39th Street and Queens Boulevard called Giros and Carga. “It’s going down.” Vasquez said that every week her shop serves more than 100 customers, who send money home to countries as diverse as Romania, Ecuador, Sri Lanka and El Salvador. She feels that out of all the customers her shop serves, Columbians are getting hit worst by the weak dollar. Currently, one dollar equals 1,825 pesos. Two years ago, you would get almost 2,500 pesos for one dollar.
American companies like Money Gram and Western Union generate high profits from immigrants' need to send American dollars home. As the dollar has declined over the past five years, due to the steep U.S. budget and trade deficits, Western Union made a profit of $1.3 billion last quarter. Based in Colorado, the company has 270,000 agents in more than 200 countries, and watches currency exchange rates as closely, if not more so, than many economists. Its Minnesota-based rival, Money Gram, is also competitive in places like Queens and the Bronx. Although the dollar is weak, immigrants and students still attempt to remit as much money as they did before, by taking more dollars out of their none-too-fat wallets.
Although native-born Americans tend to be more interested in what the dollar can buy within the U.S. – is the price of milk going up? What about oil? – for immigrants and students from developing countries, the dollar’s value at the "forex," a nickname for foreign exchange, is a constant concern.
However, for some, the weak dollar is not always a bad thing – it can make education more affordable.
“When I was in Seattle in 2001, the dollar was really high,” said Jung Min Han, 28, a Korean student completing her master’s degree in New York City. “It was hard for my parents to pay for my tuition. A lot of people in Korea go to Canada to study because the [Canadian] dollar is cheaper. Now I see some people starting to change their minds.” Students from countries including Ireland and Korea are coming to the United States to study and take advantage of the weak dollar.
Some, like a Caribbean student in Zambakari’s dormitory, say the poor exchange rate is driving families to send home clothes instead of dollars. Others are taking out larger student loans, hoping to divert some of the money to their families abroad.
To relax and get his mind off the exchange rate and his family’s overdrawn checking account, Zambakari takes free ballroom dancing classes at the international dormitory where he lives. Listening and dancing to salsa and meringue music with other foreign students helps him to forget his worries momentarily.
“Since 2003, my mom hasn’t had any balance in the bank, the money comes and it goes,” he said. He had just finished a tango lesson at his student dormitory, and was preparing for class the next day. “But it is difficult for our relatives to understand, because we are in America. They think it’s so easy to get money here. But our checking account, most of the time, is way below zero.”
