Wire Transfers: Mexico to US

[genuinegirly]

My family in California has commented on how few illegal immigrants seem to be milling around in search of work since the recession hit. This NY Times article shows a startling yet related trend. Families in Mexico are starting to send money to their relatives in the United States.


Shortened from the NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/wo...ef=global-home

Money Trickles North as Mexicans Help Relatives By MARC LACEY
MIAHUATLÁN, Mexico —
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Unemployment has hit migrant communities in the United States so hard that a startling new phenomenon has been detected: instead of receiving remittances from relatives in the richest country on earth, some down-and-out Mexican families are scraping together what they can to support their unemployed loved ones in the United States.

...
Statistics measuring the extent of what experts are calling reverse remittances are hard to come by. But interviews in Mexico with government officials, money-transfer operators, immigration experts and relatives of out-of-work migrants show that a transaction that was rarely noticed before appears to be on the rise.
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With nearly half its population living in poverty, Mexico is not well placed to prop up struggling citizens abroad. Mexico could lose as many as 735,000 jobs this year and its economy may decline 7.5 percent, government economists predict, making the country one of the worst affected by the global recession.

Still, poverty is a relative concept. It is easier to get by on little in Mexico, especially in rural areas, allowing the poor to help the even more precarious.

...
Still, although a study by the Pew Hispanic Center from July showed a sharp decrease in the number of Mexicans heading north, there has been no sign of a mass exodus of migrants back to Mexico. Immigrants’ families say it took great effort to scrape together the thousands of dollars needed to send relatives to the United States, a sum that includes the fees charged by the people who help them sneak in.
...
As expected during an economic slowdown, the money sent home by immigrants has fallen. The Bank of Mexico reported recently that remittances during the first nine months of this year dropped to $16.4 billion, a 13.4 percent decline compared with the same period in 2008.

The flow of money out of Mexico is believed to be a tiny fraction of the remittances still arriving. “The evidence in this regard so far is anecdotal,” said Juan Luis Ordaz, senior economist at the Spanish bank BBVA Bancomer, who has begun investigating the reverse money flow.

Families of migrants speak proudly of their successful relatives in the United States and use the remittances they receive to do anything from buying livestock to replacing dirt floors with concrete. The importance of such money, which is among Mexico’s top sources of foreign currency, cannot be overstated. An estimated 5.9 percent of Mexican households, about 1.8 million families, receive economic support from abroad, studies show. For them, the money represents roughly 19 percent of total income for urban households and 27 percent for rural ones, according to government data analyzed by BBVA Bancomer.
...

This is a striking trend.

It brings up several questions:
- Are you familiar with families who are currently faced with a similar situation?
- Do you know anyone who was disgruntled with the current job market and has left your state/country to seek employment abroad?
- Does this trend indicate a greater problem with a material-driven culture?
- Does this mean that the US is any less of a world power?
- One of the Mexican families in the article mentioned their land was theirs and couldn't be taken away. With the trend of debt and mortgages in the US, do the homeowners in the US have this same stability? Even for those who own their homes, would you feel confident raising livestock in Suburbia?

I'm curious - how does this trend impact you? What do you think of when you read about it?