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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Fewer immigrants sending money to Latin America
Fewer immigrants from Latin America are regularly sending money to their home countries because of the slumping U.S. economy and a growing “anti-immigrant” climate, a survey released Wednesday found.
As a consequence, millions of poor families in Latin America will not get the vital help that the money provides, the survey by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) concluded.
The survey found that half of immigrants — both legal and illegal — were sending money regularly back to their home countries in Latin America this year, compared to 73 percent in 2006.
Despite the drop, the total amount of the remittances is projected to stay roughly level over the same time period, at around $45 billion, because the average amount of each remittance has increased and there are more Latin Americans in the United States, the survey found.
Sergio Bendixen, a veteran pollster whose Miami-based company carried out the survey, said that a growing “anti-immigrant” sentiment in the United States is a major cause for the drop in number of immigrants sending money back home.
He cited state laws and local ordinances that have cracked down on illegal immigration such as the one in Hazleton, Pa., that he said created a climate of fear in which immigrants have felt insecure about their futures and are therefore more hesitant to send money home.
“They feel that they are not welcome in America anymore,” Bendixen said. “They don’t know whether they will be able to work next month or whether they will to be able to rent an apartment … so many become conservative about how they spend their money.”
States like Pennsylvania, where such ordinances have been passed, saw significant declines in remittances, the survey found.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports lower levels of immigration, said that Latin American governments should stop looking at exporting their labor force as a source of development income.
In addition, he said that the survey shows that the anti-illegal immigration ordinances are working.
“The goal of enforcement is to get illegal immigrants to change their behavior,” he said. “It’s to change the climate so that illegal immigrants get the message that the party is over and they need to go home.”
Read the survey here.
