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SAN SALVADOR —When Jose and Maria Campos moved to El Salvador from Langley Park in October, they moved into the spacious three-story house they spent nine years remodeling from thousands of miles away. It has a balcony and a garage, and it cost them more than $60,000.

They lived in basement apartments in Maryland. They now spend evenings on their breezy terrace overlooking their neighborhood on the outskirts of San Salvador, which they said has changed almost beyond recognition. And when the couple talk about the Potomac River or traveling along University Boulevard in Silver Spring, their eyes light up. They look like immigrants talking about home while living in a foreign land.

"I came back, but I didn't come back willingly," Maria, 59, said in Spanish. "I came back because we had to."

Like many immigrants in Prince George's County, Jose, 59, couldn't find a steady job in the decimated American job market. But unlike many Latino immigrants who are riding out the recession, Jose and Maria returned to their homeland.

Although happy to be with their children and grandchildren again, they regret the choice they've made. They worry about how they will support themselves, even feed themselves, in El Salvador's even harsher economic climate.

Returning home

Despite the recession and lack of jobs, few Latino immigrants say they will return to their home countries as Jose and Maria did.

An August 2009 survey by the nonprofit think tank Inter-American Dialogue found that one-third of Latino immigrants wished to return to their home countries in the next five years, but only 5 percent said they would leave due to the lack of jobs in the United States.

The most common reason: to reunite with families. The bad economy, however, contributes to a general feeling of anxiety.

"In our results, the percentage of people who wanted to return was not low, it was high. It doesn't mean they will. It just means the state of anxiety you're faced with means it makes you consider returning," said Manuel Orozco, remittances and development program director at Inter-American Dialogue. "When we ask them if they were planning to return, 27 percent of Salvadorans said yes. A year ago, it was 20 percent. So it's only an indicator that you are concerned."

It's unclear whether Salvadorans are still migrating to the United States in the same numbers as they did before the recession. One of the best ways to track migration trends is through the amount of remittances—the money sent from immigrants back to their home countries, according to Katharine Andrade-Eelchoff, a former professor and researcher at the Universidad Centroamericana, who has worked on migration issues for 25 years. For El Salvador, that number dropped in 2009 by 8.5 percent, or about $323 million, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, which tracks remittances.

At the Casa de Maryland Workers' Center in Langley Park, there are more people waiting for fewer jobs, says André Vainqueur, manager of the center.

Jose went to the workers' centers in Langley Park and Silver Spring often when the couple lived in America. He visited the Langley Park center the week he flew back to El Salvador to say goodbye to the people who run the center.

Vilma del Carmen, 36, of Langley Park also comes to the center looking for work. She immigrated from El Salvador four years ago, and more than a year ago was laid off from a steady fabric store job. She sends money back to her two teenage sons and an adult sister who has epilepsy.

"It's becoming harder and harder for people to get a good job, a steady job. I'm very concerned," she said in Spanish.

Speaking English

Del Carmen is taking English classes through the center to make herself more employable, something that Casa Executive Director Gustavo Torres said he is seeing among many local immigrants at the center.

"[English for Speakers of Other Languages] classes are very, very essential, and ours are packed. We have more than 500 [enrolled] and a waiting list, too," he said. "People really realized they need to improve their language [skills] so they can be more marketable for jobs."

Vainqueur noticed that the center suffered a drop in the number of available jobs starting in December 2008 — especially in the construction and hospitality industries. He also noticed a huge increase in the number of people looking for work at the center.

Most people now work odd jobs within a span of three months, unlike two years ago, when steady employment was more available. People are growing increasingly frustrated and desperate, he said, especially those supporting families abroad.

"... They depend on the money we send back home, and in El Salvador there are no jobs. I feel desperate," Del Carmen said. "I feel sometimes like going [back home], but I ask myself, ‘What am I going to do there?'"

Vainqueur said many are hoping the economy will improve.

"It's not going to be a very quick decision that, ‘Oh well, the economy is bad, I'm going to pack up and go home,'' he said.

Jose and Maria couldn't wait for the economy to get better. Maria had a well-paying job taking care of the household of a fellow Salvadoran immigrant. But Maria's health deteriorated; she had problems with her uterus and her bladder, and the stress of working long hours wasn't helping.

Meanwhile, Jose couldn't find construction and gardening jobs as easily.

"We also had to pay the rent, and my job wasn't paying much," Jose said. "Her pay was good, but it was difficult, because her health was worsening. Maybe if there were more opportunities [for me], we would have stayed."

The prospect of enduring another winter, when temporary jobs in construction and gardening become even scarcer, helped push them to return to El Salvador, to the house they had worked so hard to remodel but had never lived in.

Unlike many Salvadoran immigrants, Maria and Jose left El Salvador as middle-age adults. The money they sent back home mostly went toward remodeling their house rather than supporting a family. They love being with their family again, but they miss Maryland.

Starting over

The couple said it's harder for them to find work in El Salvador than in Maryland because of the economy and also because older adults have a harder time competing against young people there than in the United States. Right now, they're trying to sell a car and living off their savings, unsure of what to do next year when their savings dry up.

Their community has changed dramatically. When the couple bought the small house on the outskirts of San Salvador 10 years ago, they were the first in the area. Now houses are lined up side by side.

El Salvador also now has a severe crime problem, something to which they're unaccustomed. They worry daily about carjackings, shootings and robberies, so they only go out when absolutely necessary. Maria wishes she could still wear the jewelry she wore in America without the fear that it would be stolen.

She says she would like to eventually return to America, and she's not alone. The Inter-American Dialogue report also found that 37 percent of immigrants who said they wanted to go back to their home countries would also consider immigrating again to the United States.

"Even in my age, if my health was better, I would go again," she said.

Maria spends a lot of time in the kitchen Jose designed for her, a plan based upon the many kitchens he built and painted in Prince George's and Montgomery counties. It's much nicer than the Maryland basement apartments they've lived in—stainless steel refrigerator, new appliances, painted a cheerful green— and it doesn't have cockroaches, either.

Yet she still thinks about her American life. She wants to get back to it someday.

"I realized my dream,'' she said. "But I left it all with great love.''

Visit "Fractured pipeline," Gazette.Net's collection of reports on the relationship between El Salvador and Maryland.

About this special report: Gazette reporter Elahe Izadi traveled to El Salvador in February to examine the impact of the U.S. recession on local immigrants working to send money to their families and communities in El Salvador. This project was produced on a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship directed by the International Center for Journalists and funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.