Salvadoran President visits Southland

El Salvador's president, Mauricio Funes, is in the Southland today and tomorrow to connect with the largest concentration of Salvadorans outside his country.

There are about a million-and-a-half Salvadorans in Southern California, not counting their US-born children.

Email, chat, and Skype makes many feel like they never left El Salvador, according to Cal State Northridge Central American Studies Professor Douglas Carranza.

"The Salvadoran community has become like a transnational community that lives here but lives there, too," he said.

Which makes many upset, he said, that El Salvador’s government hasn’t improved the country’s economy to keep people from leaving. The three billion dollars in remittances that Salvadorans send home yearly, Carranza says, makes them a formidable economic force. "And three billion a year that has not been translated in some political ways, especially for the community here," Carranza said.

Salvadorans outside the country are still unable to vote in elections back home. Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes will likely hear those concerns when he meets with an invited group of Salvadoran-American business and civic leaders in Los Angeles.