The immigration reform is still embroiled in Washington politics. The embroilment is big because the health reform is still tangled up. Both are at end of a tunnel, that keeps many unemployed in the country, in the darkness. Almost a 13 percent among them are latinos.

 It was a bleak picture for those who hoped that the first speech of President Barack Obama about the “State of the Union”, would give them a sign of whether their anguish would have a solution, or the beginning of a solution, in the first years of his administration.

Each one of them, according to their needs, squeezes Obama’s words looking for meaning and tries to analyze them, when in fact no speech can fix anything about the current situation.

In the case of latinos, who besides lacking health insurance and employment, face immigration problems.  The few of Obama’s words, were the same as always. There wasn’t even a call to the Congress to urgently approve an immigration reform.

While the anxiety that a widely analyzed speech (even before it had taken place) will bring light to the future, hispanics take real steps to reactivate the economy.

And it’s not about the latest national academic studies or the ones from non-governmental agencies; it’s about the investigation of the son of a single salvadoran mother, about a small urban area that demonstrates the impact of mexican businessman in South Philadelphia.

This is the way they move the economy: For four years of hard work, and under the mattress, they save an average of $40.000, and without much more than their high-school studies, they risk to establish a business with that money, regardless of the current economic crisis and the lack of english. And so, each of 83 business employs 4 to 5 people.

The drive of the immigrant is so big, that they would even invest a 25 percent more in their business, if it wasn’t for the fear of deportation. In this study by Oscar Benitez, the son of an immigrant, and the University of Pennsylvania,  the numbers are so clear that they don’t get tangled up in the accounts of national politics.