Migrants Send Less Money Back to Mexico
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The U.S. economic downturn and tightened border controls have begun to alter the rhythms of undocumented migrants who used to move back and forth with regularity, which has crimped the flow of money sent home to Mexico, one of the nation’s main sources of foreign income.
The developments have produced worry and deep uncertainty in towns such as Tejaro, a farming community of 4,200 where pickup trucks bear license plates from Nevada and Minnesota. Virtually every family here has sent relatives across the border, usually illegally and often to the same few U.S. destinations.
The number of residents from this part of central Michoacan state who are making the trip this year is about half the usual rate of 8,000, said Juan Felipe Ruiz Lopez, a former undocumented worker in Georgia who now oversees migrant issues for the municipality that includes Tejaro.
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On the edge of a tree-shaded plaza in nearby Tarimbaro, the municipal seat, the town’s lone money exchange has seen transfers drop to about $800 daily from $7,000, said co-owner Maria de los Angeles Duarte.
She said those still sending money do so less often, every two weeks instead of weekly.
Residents and analysts say the drop shows the precarious situation of migrants in the United States. Many are holding on to their wages as a hedge, while others have given up and gone home.
Donald F. Terry, a senior official at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, said about 1 million fewer Mexican families are now receiving remittances, increasing the risk of poverty.
“You could have an increase in poverty in Mexico, and it could be significant if the numbers accelerate,” Terry said.
A deepening cash shortage could push reluctant migrants to hit the road again, said Jorge Smeke, who heads the business administration program at Iberoamerican University in Mexico City.
“People could decide, ‘I have to go,’ “ Smeke said. “A drop in remittances could produce a greater flow of migrants, or a greater flow to the cities” in Mexico.
{snip}
“If you don’t have work here, you have to go somewhere. It’s the reality of Mexico,” said Hernandez, 38, wearing a blue baseball cap and the cocksure demeanor of a man who has sneaked past border agents four times. “We have to go because here we can’t survive.”
U.S. immigration officials say falling arrests and remittances are evidence that many undocumented migrants have been dissuaded by the stricter measures, which include hundreds more border agents, new fences and, in selected areas, criminal prosecution of those caught crossing.
Arrests on the border fell to 876,704 during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a 20% decline from the previous year. This year, they are on pace to be lower still, by about 16%.
Some argue that the sagging economy is probably a bigger factor in the drop-off. They say smugglers continue to get migrants past the beefed-up border defenses by using false documents or traveling by sea.
Wayne Cornelius, an immigration expert at UC San Diego, predicted that border arrests and money transfers would bounce back to earlier levels once the U.S. economy recovered. That’s what happened when border arrests fell during the 2001-02 economic downturn, he said.
{snip}
(Posted on April 21, 2008)
Comments
Ironically, just a few minutes ago I was at the grocery store service counter in line behind a Mexican trying to wire $1,000 home. The store charged $1.98 to send the wire, but the Mexican had only brought in a dollar for the fee and tried to get the cashier to drop the price for the wire. Finally the Mexican irritably insisted that she hold the transaction open while she ran out to her car to get more change!
Everyone in line had to wait for the Mexican to come back from her car - I was about to complain when the most wonderful thing happened: an old white lady at the back of the line started loudly complaining about illegal immigrants and then yelled towards the cashier, “You know all that money LEAVES THIS COUNTRY!!” The cashier, who was white, pretended not to hear and fiddled with the shelves behind her, but I think she was laughing.
Just then, the Mexican came back she had a HUGE fist full of change. She didn’t even try to count out the $0.98 - she just handed the cashier about five dollars in pennies and nickels and waited very impatiently for the poor clerk to count it out for her and return the rest of the coins. The cashier counted the change outloud in an exaggerated voice and then handed the rest back to the Mexican saying, “You gave me WAY TOO MUCH change, didn’t you?”
Although it was mostly subtle, I could tell that everyone in line including cashier was thinking the same thing. Average white Americans are FED UP with illegal aliens and the problems they cause. We’re not taking their attitude anymore, either!
Posted by Jill at 6:57 PM on April 21
Maybe because a high percentage of Mexico is here already, so these “remittances” need not cross the fiction formerly known as the “border.”
Posted by Question Diversity at 7:25 PM on April 21
If the migrants wait long enough, they’ll have free passage anywhere in the ‘North American Union’.
I don’t know if I can believe statistics on tighter border security and fewer undocumented migrants. Carter and GW Bush, the two worst presidents ever, are making sure they do this country in before Bush is out of office.
Carter-Obama-Hamas/Mexico-U.S.-Canada-this globalization is a sign of the beginning of the end. I don’t know when exactly it started or how much worse it will get.
Posted by at 8:29 PM on April 21
Lol….if they think that’s bad for Mexico then they are in for a rude awakening. Sometime around the end of the summer this year, a company called EMC2 Fusion Associates will fire up a test reactor that will prove that nuclear fusion is a viable technology in need of only a modest investment to solve a few engineering problems. Once that goes public, there will be a scramble to develop the technology. Roughly 5 years later, nuclear fusion will become a way we generate electricity. Within 10, oil will be worthless. Great for us, but the impact of Mexico, Venezuela, the middle east etc. will be devastating. These one commodity counties will be entirely destroyed. But let me ask something? Who will care? Mexicans have been acting like jerks for decades now, exploiting the US and severely lowering our standard of living. The middle east is filled with psychopaths that hate us without reason and think the day is near when they will conquer and enslave us (despite the incredible disparity in power between them and us). Quite frankly, I don’t know a single person who would give a rats behind if every single person in Mexico and points south, or the middle east, starved to death.
International trade as a form of welfare is pretty close to an end now.
Posted by at 8:53 PM on April 21
Under Ron Paul America will be able to round up legal and illegal Mestizo’s and send’em home with better coordination and plannin’ since prior to Freemason President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing the immigration reform act of 1965.
Posted by Colt at 10:25 PM on April 21
“EMC2 Fusion Associates will fire up a test reactor that will prove that nuclear fusion is a viable technology in need of only a modest investment to solve a few engineering problems. “
You mean the old saw about “Controlled nuclear fusion is 50-years down the road” will finally be proven wrong? I can’t wait. :-)
Posted by at 9:05 AM on April 22
Colt,
Ron Paul is a Randroid libertarian, one whom I admire and support, but he’s not “one of us” and he certainly doesn’t advocate for returning to having an America for Americans. With a government corrupt and set against our general welfare as this one, anybody advocating for less intrusive government is acting in our interests.
But Ron Paul has been quite blunt, and has not minced words in his rejection of White nationalism and his ambivalence toward the maintenance and protection of the Anglo-American way of life.
Posted by Wikitopian at 10:59 AM on April 22
Their own American city of Los Angeles has been overrun with illiterate Mexicans — who are utterly DESTROYING the place — and the LA Times prints sob stories about the lamentable effects that illegal Mexican migration is having on… MEXICO.
Forgive me if I don’t share their noble internationalist concern, but aren’t newspapers supposed to serve their own local communities? Will the paper’s Sports section also start rooting for visiting teams against the Lakers and the Dodgers?
The LA Times is acting as cheerleader for their own annihilation. Every article like this just pushes more and more whites out of the city, out of the state, or even out of the country.
Posted by at 2:24 PM on April 22
Most “legal” mexicans I know despise the chaff that’s coming up to the USA. We have enough illiterate, ignorant, white trash (and black) criminals, thank you….i’m not interested in have ‘mexican’ criminals aded to the list.
Posted by Kathleen at 12:45 AM on April 24
2:24, the case against the nuttiness of the L.A. Times is even more ridiculous than the way you correctly put it. All any L.A. Times reporter has to do is look out of the window of the Times building to understand how much decay has set into Los Angeles. They(Times reporters) are truly a case of those who have eyes but cannot see.
Posted by Bobby at 4:54 PM on April 24