In Wendover, on the Utah-Nevada line, Mary Delgadillo is among Mexican immigrants who say they're not sending home as much money as they used to because they now have families to support here.

Delgadillo, originally from the state of Zacatecas, moved to Wendover in 1993 as a teenager, after her father left and she had to work to support her mother, who was ill and living in Mexico.

"I had to help my mom. I worked many hours to support my mom," she says.

Eventually, she married and started her own family. "That changed everything," says Delgadillo, who is now a homemaker with a 1-year-old daughter. She says she could no longer afford to send money back to her mother.

Bate says this is the first poll that has shown a slowdown in the rate of remittances. However, he says, Mexico is less reliant on remittances than some other nations, such as Haiti and El Salvador.

"In Mexico, you wouldn't see a national-scale impact," he says. "In communities that are sources of immigration, you would see an impact on the local level."

For the most part, rural areas outside of Zacatecas city aren't set up to develop economically, says Fernando Robledo Martinez, director of the Zacatecas State Institute of Migration.

Farmers and ranchers here in the state of Zacatecas sell raw products to people who process them and then mark them up for sale, he explains. So there's little profit for the farmers.

"The state of Zacatecas is one of the poorest states in Mexico," Martinez says. "We have no industry, no forests, no water, no coastline, no wood, no gas, petroleum. We have nothing."

The state relies on federal monies, he says, as well as on expatriates who send remittances and help pay for projects in their hometowns through government-subsidized programs.

"We have to have a strong economy and change the way we do things," Martinez says. "We can't change Zacatecas by itself. The whole country has to change. I don't see that coming, because of our close relationship to the United States."

By that, he means that as American employers continue to hire low-skilled workers, Zacatecas is facing a drain of employees. Those with the most ingenuity see little opportunities at home, so they leave, Martinez says.

"The migrants are the best people, people who are willing to risk, willing to migrate," he adds. "They have drive to do things, a drive to change things. They don't stay."

Uncertain prospects

Still, life in the United States isn't always lucrative. Nearly half the immigrants living in poverty in the United States are from Mexico, according to a report by Mexico's National Population Council, based on 2005 census survey data.