The Dream Endangered

The real estate boom helped many immigrants attain the American Dream, but now they are being hurt by the recession as hard as all the rest of us. - - Donna Poisl

Many Immigrants Who Prospered in the Boom Now Face Crisis

By Alejandro Lazo, Washington Post Staff Writer

Oscar Arias saw in the real estate boom an opportunity to retire home to Nicaragua a wealthy man after fleeing the Sandinistas with nothing to his name in the 1980s.

He spent years in the United States toiling as a dishwasher, a chef and a construction worker. In 2001, he founded a residential and commercial renovation company, Potomac Restoration, out of his Woodbridge home. He bought two additional houses during the boom and planned to sell them and return to Nicaragua with a nice cushion, he said.

But the housing bust has left the 54-year-old on the brink of ruin. He has worked only a month this year.
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