In a split-second decision, construction worker Hugo Hernandez chose to give up his life in Riverside to rush back to El Salvador after this month's devastating earthquake.

Hernandez, 38, effectively forfeited his U. S. work permit by leaving the country the day after the Jan. 13 quake to check on his 17-year-old daughter. The girl was caring for an elderly aunt in El Salvador, said Hernandez's sister, Ana Munoz.

"In the end, it's family first, material things second," said Munoz, 45, a Salvadoran immigrant and U. S. citizen who works at a Riverside swap meet.

With their families split between two countries, many Inland immigrants from El Salvador are weighing financial and legal factors in deciding whether to reunite with relatives back home.

The U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has temporarily suspended the deportation of undocumented Salvadoran immigrants. The INS also is issuing temporary permits, called advance paroles, allowing Salvadoran immigrants with U. S. work visas or asylum applications to return to El Salvador for up to 90 days. The permits allow them to re-enter the United States.

Munoz said her brother didn't want to wait for permission to leave the country. She said he did the right thing to return so quickly to El Salvador, where he discovered that the 7.6-magnitude quake damaged the family home in Santa Tecla and so traumatized his aunt that she had a stroke and died. His teen daughter had been fending for herself.

At least 5,000 Salvadoran immigrants live in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to estimates from community leaders and the Salvadoran Consulate in Santa Ana.

Some say legal and illegal immigration to the United States will increase after the quake, as families struggling to rebuild their houses send members to the United States to earn higher wages and send money home.

Meanwhile, most illegal immigrants already in the United States will stay put, figuring they can do more to help their families by working here than by returning to El Salvador and risking being unable to re-enter the United States, said Rebeca Melendez, 25, a U. S. citizen who emigrated from El Salvador at age 4 and lives in Riverside.

"Ultimately, that's what a lot of families do. Emotional support, you can do that over the telephone," said Melendez, Hispanic outreach coordinator for the Riverside Area Rape Crisis Center. She said she has met many immigrants who came to the United States after El Salvador's last earthquake in 1986.

Families that lost all their possessions feel they have nothing to lose by moving north, Melendez said. "If you're going to start over, you might as well start over in the States."

Ana Coralia de Morot-Gaudry, the Salvadoran consul in Santa Ana, agreed.

"It's only normal they're going to want to enter the U. S. to work," she said.

But her government is warning Salvadorans against trying to enter the United States illegally. Smugglers often rob immigrants of everything they own, Morot-Gaudry cautioned.

"How many have died in the deserts? How many have been raped?" she said.

Up to 25 percent of all Salvadorans live outside El Salvador, the majority of them in the United States, the consul said.

Amalia Hernandez, 27, a fast-food cook from Murrieta Hot Springs, said she and a brother support their elderly parents back in El Salvador. Last fall, she wired about $1,500 home for her father's heart operation. She sends $100 a month for his medication.

The earthquake leveled her parent's brick house, leaving only one wall standing, held upright by a mango tree. She hopes to save $5,000 from her U. S. wages over the next six months to pay for a small adobe home for her parents.

Salvadoran immigrants in the United States send $1.7 billion home each year, a financial boost greater than El Salvador's total annual export earnings, said Nora Hamilton, a Latin American politics professor at the University of Southern California. "The economy is very dependent on people working in this country."

It is tough to predict whether immigration will increase, Hamilton said, but Salvadorans who already have relatives here might try to join them.

INS spokesman Bill Strassberger said he does not expect a surge in immigration after the earthquake.

"That theory always comes up after every environmental disaster. It generally doesn't hold up," Strassberger said. Legal immigration did not increase noticeably after the 1986 earthquake, he said. "In the illegal population, we just don't know."

After Hurricane Mitch, which flooded Central American countries in 1998, there was only a slight bump in the number of people caught trying to enter the United States illegally, Strassberger said.

Last week, the INS suspended deportations of some 1,100 Salvadorans in its custody until El Salvador rebuilds sufficient infrastructure to take them back, which could take a few months or a year, he said.

But the INS and U. S. Border Patrol have not stopped enforcing laws against Salvadoran immigrants here illegally, Strassberger said. "We still continue to pick up El Salvadorans that are here unlawfully, (but) we're not going to send them back."

Salvadoran immigrants and officials praised the generosity of U. S. donors to quake relief efforts. Inland residents and businesses, including the Salvadoran restaurant Pupuseria La Sierra in Riverside, have donated more than $20,000 so far.

But the Salvadoran government also is asking the United States to grant "temporary protected status" to illegal immigrants who have been living here since before the earthquake. Officials say the status would allow undocumented immigrants to quality for a temporary work visa, sanctioning their use of U. S. wages to rebuild El Salvador.

"We'd like a little consideration, a little solidarity," Consul Morot-Gaudry said.

The U. S. attorney general's office is consulting with INS and the State Department to evaluate the Salvadoran government request, Strassberger said. He said the United States did grant "temporary protected status" to some illegal Honduran and Nicaraguan immigrants after Hurricane Mitch.

More information is available at the INS district office, 300 N. Los Angeles St., or by phone at (800) 375-5283.

Sharyn Obsatz can be reached at by e-mail at sobsatz@pe.com or by phone at (909) 245-2934.