Despite her good grades -- report cards filled with B's and A's -- 1992 Socorro High School graduate Elisa Contreras never thought about college after graduation.

"My parents never told me not to go to college, but they never told me that I should go either," said Contreras, now a married mother of three and a clerical employee at an East Side factory. "I knew that my help was needed as far as bringing money into the house."

Contreras is not alone. El Pasoans are either forgoing college to join the work force or picking careers that are low-paying in an effort to stay in the city. Some, after earning college degrees in fields such as engineering, can't find jobs in their professions in El Paso and, instead of leaving town, change careers.

Sociologists, economists and other academic professionals say this El Paso phenomenon -- what some call the "mija factor" -- is keeping some families from breaking through poverty. This phenomenon also prevents thousands of qualified young adults from reaching their full financial potential.

More than 200,000 El Pasoans, or 29.6 percent of us, live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The national poverty rate is 12.6 percent. According to federal poverty guideline, a poor family of four has $14.14 a day to spend per family member; single people living on the poverty line have $27.97 a day to spend.

An additional 100,000 El Pasoans are considered poor by federal standards because they make less than 150 percent of the poverty-level income. For a family of four, that would be $30,975.

The median household income in El Paso is $30,968.

Officials say El Pasoans are settling for low-paying wages because they want to stay home, one factor that keeps the city one of the poorest in the United States.

" My daughter can't leave my son needs to come home.' I don't think it's necessarily healthy for a community to think that way," said Dennis Sodden, the executive director of the Institute for Policy and Economic Development at the University of Texas at El Paso.

"People on the border are more settled," he added. "They are more wiling to say, This is just the way it is.' "

UTEP economics Professor Tom Fullerton agreed with Sodden, and said that "brain drain," the idea that El Paso's best and brightest are picking up and leaving for larger cities, is nonexistent.

"Our smart kids the ones that are graduating near the top of their class they are not leaving town. For the most part they are staying," Fullerton said.

"The brain drain, I think, is not really happening. What we are seeing instead is a severe case of underemployment of highly qualified professionals," he said. "And that is not helping the city reach its earning potential."

Fullerton said El Paso high-school graduates are enrolling at UTEP in larger numbers and are earning degrees in competitive fields such as engineering, health sciences and business administration.

According to the university, 82 percent of the nearly 20,000 students at UTEP are from El Paso County high schools.

"We are getting more kids to college, and we are having more kids earn degrees," Fullerton said. "But we don't have the jobs that will pay them what their positions could pay in other cities, so they stick around and earn below what their potential is."

Fullerton's comments are backed by the U.S. Census Bureau, which shows the per capita income for the average El Pasoan was $15,248 in 2005. The national average was $25,035.

Census figures also show that the percentage of families living in poverty in El Paso is more than twice the national percentage.

The mija factor, the cultural pull that keeps El Pasoans in El Paso despite wage disparities, does force college-educated professionals to take jobs that they are overqualified for - jobs that they didn't initially pursue.

Because teaching jobs can have salaries starting about $40,000, alternative teacher certification programs have become popular among local college graduates who have no plans to leave the city.

Each year, close to 500 people go through the yearlong alternative certification process in the five programs in the city.

Sylvia Zamora, a first-grade teacher at Desert Hills Elementary School, graduated from UTEP with a degree in computer information systems. Her husband, who teaches at Horizon Middle School, earned a bachelor's degree in business administration.

Zamora said both were offered well-paid positions in their fields outside of El Paso. But after mulling over the offers, they decided to decline them and become educators.

"We never thought we would be teachers. That was just not what either of us had in mind," she said. "But we have children, and we both have parents that are getting older. We really wanted to be here in El Paso."

Dennis Bixler-Marquez, the director of the Chicano Studies program at UTEP, said he was not surprised to hear many that El Pasoans decide to forgo good economic opportunities in favor of being close to their family.

Bixler-Marquez said Hispanic people - especially those who live along the U.S.-Mexico border and are therefore closer to their cultural ties - have a heightened sense of community and family.

"In terms of the overall Latino value, familism' and identity with a larger social network that supports you in good times and in time of need is of utmost importance," he said. "Having said that, it's important to note that it's not just family ties that keep (professionals) in El Paso, but the fact that many young adults are economically responsible for their older parents."

In addition, Bixler-Marquez said, many young El Paso professionals are either staying in city or returning after being away in an effort "to change things."

"There was a big push to hire engineers from UTEP in the Silicon Valley in the 1980s and 1990s, but the big problem they had with our engineers was that they would never stick around," he said. "There are many professionals returning to the city wanting to make their mark and change things."

Examples can be found in bodies such as the El Paso City Council, where five of the current city representative are younger than 40. Most of them at one time lived away from El Paso.

Young entrepreneurs are opening successful businesses, such as the 1914 Lounge and Vanilla Bar, and school district recruiters say they are seeing a small surge in the number of young teachers seeking to come teach in El Paso.

"Sure, it's a cultural thing. We want to be in El Paso to be close to our families," said Angel Lopez, a 25-year-old El Paso engineer who has opted to stay here. "But there are many of us who recognize that if the city is to move forward, we are the ones that that will have to make it happen."

This article was published in Week 2 of the El Paso Times Poverty Series.