Deudas | « Allstate Launches ‘Asi Piensa Allstate’ Hispanic Advertising Series Featuring Actor Esai Morales | Hispanic Marketing | Latino ads »
Immigrants Send Home Almost $2,000 Each Year
From the Banco de America branch 12 blocks from the White House to the Western Union, migrant workers in the United States now send more than $30 billion a year to relatives back home _ an average of $1,805 for each migrant wage earner.
California leads the pack in these remittances at $9.6 billion a year, followed by New York at $3.6 billion, Texas at $3.2 billion and Florida at $2.4 billion, according to the first study of its kind, done for the Inter-American Development Bank. The study looked at 37 states and Washington, D.C.
The report also details how Latinos are finding their livelihoods in states other than these traditional migration centers:
_ More than 1 million Latino immigrants in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Virginia _ many of them working in poultry and other food-processing industries _ accounted for more than $2.2 billion in Latin American remittances in 2003.
_ Stateside relatives in the South were especially generous. North Carolina, at $2,864, and Alabama, at $2,797, were outranked only by Maryland at $2,897 in the average amount each immigrant sent relatives back home last year. By contrast, Florida at $1,363 and Texas at $1,249 ranked 35th and 36th, respectively, followed by Arizona at $1,132 and New Mexico at $776.
_ Remittances topped $1 billion last year in and around Washington, D.C., where 40 percent of the construction workers who rebuilt the Pentagon after 9/11 came from the Latino community.
"The money helps them all get ahead, including my parents," said Florentin Chicas, a construction worker who has worked steadily since coming to suburban Washington from El Salvador five years ago.
Donald Terry, head of the development bank's multilateral investment fund, said the study results were surprising because "migration and remittances are much more broadly based in the U.S. than we thought." However, he added, the results point to "increasing integration of the labor markets across national borders."
Mexico alone received $13.3 billion in remittances last year. the No. 1 source of income for the country. Remittances to many other Latin American and Caribbean nations also outstripped domestic industry, tourism and foreign aid as income sources, development bank officials said.
The study _ based on detailed household interviews in 37 states with 3,802 families by the Miami polling firm of Bendixen & Associates _ found that falling costs of fund transfers is encouraging migrants to send money home more often.
With money transfers now costing 7 percent of the value of the remittance, down from 15 percent five years ago, migrants send money home monthly on average rather than every six weeks.
Samuel Bodman, deputy U.S. Treasury secretary, said immigrants have sent money home for generations to Ireland, Poland, the Philippines, Latin America and points in between. But high-speed money transfers and labor mobility have fueled remittance growth so that, "since 1995, annual remittances from the United States have nearly doubled."
He added that helping remittance recipients "improve their own economic livelihood" back home will have top priority at the G8 summit in June in Sea Island, Ga.
On the Net: www.iadb.org
Copyright 2004 Scripps Howard News Service
May 18, 2004 06:21 PM | 1-855-ABOGADA | Abogadas de Inmigracion
Credit - Law - Money - Mortgage - Autos | Credito | Deudas | Seguros | Finanzas | Negocios | Prestamos | Refinanciar Abogados Credito | Abogados Dinero | Abogados Negocios | Abogados Prestamos | Abogados Casas | Abogados Fraudes | Abogados Impuestos | Abogados Seguros | Abogados Estados Unidos | Domestic Violence | Derechos en Estados Unidos | Abogacia Estados Unidos