Since the year 2000 remittances back home of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants in the United States have totalled $312billion. Countries like Brazil and Mexico benefited from all this, but some of the smaller and weaker economies have depended heavily on such remittances, countries like Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti.
In 2006 in Honduras $2.36 billion came in from migrants abroad, representing 26% of overall GDP! El Salvador received $3.7 billion, 18% of its GDP. For Mexico remittances from migrants represent its second largest source of foreign earnings after oil exports. Something between 5 and 6 million families (around 20 to 30 million people) in Mexico receive regular remittances from relatives abroad.
In the central Mexican state of Zacatecas 10% of local GDP is accounted for by remittances from family members abroad. A recent survey revealed that families in Zacatecas are receiving money less frequently than before and the amount is also going down from around $300 every two or three months to $200.
The Inter-American Development Bank has calculated that at least one million of these Mexican families are about to lose this income, as the recession begins to bite in the USA. In January of this year the Central Bank in Mexico reported a 6% fall in remittances, the first fall since it started keeping records on these movements in 1995. In Brazil remittances fell by 4% in 2007.
The collapse in the housing market in the USA is one contributing factor to this phenomenon. Large numbers of Mexicans are employed in the US construction industry. Now many of these are being laid off. To add insult to injury, the falling value of the dollar is also reducing the amount families receive in local currency.
On top of all this the US has recently imposed tougher border controls, making it even more expensive for would-be illegal immigrants to get across the border. When they were needed to fuel the US booming economy and its demand for cheap labour, "illegal" immigrants could count on officials turning a blind eye… and demanding a smaller cut from the illegal traffickers. Now that the recession is biting they suddenly discover the need for tougher measures… or at least a higher cut!
Capitalism, in its wasteful approach and disregard for the environment, long ago discovered throw-away goods such as pens, bottles, and anything you wish to think of. Now we have human beings treated in the same manner. We have the throw-away worker that you can dump on the rubbish heap [garbage for our American friends]… not your own rubbish heap, but that of the poorer countries, like they do with everything else.
