A rarely considered angle to the immigration issue

as a regular "remitter," i can attest first-hand to the accuracy of the following... i can also attest to the usurious fees charged by the money transfer services... western union, for instance, charges me between 25 and 30% depending on the amount of the transaction and that doesn't reflect what they recoup on their below market currency exchange rate...

The money sent home by migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean amounted to 45 billion dollars last year, double the total from 10 years ago. Thanks to these remittances, an estimated 2.5 million people in the region have been able to escape poverty.

Although remittances do little to reduce poverty for the population at large, the impact is huge for those who directly receive the money from abroad. At least half of the people in households with ties to emigrants would be poor if they did not receive remittances, while others who are living in poverty would be extremely poor.

and those remittances would come primarily from where...?

The majority of the funds come from immigrants living in the United States. But significant amounts are also sent home from migrants in Canada, Spain and Japan, which is home to more than 254,000 Brazilians, according to a 2004 study by the Organisation of American States (OAS).

[...]

ECLAC [Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean] notes that the economies of Haiti, Nicaragua, Guyana and Jamaica are heavily dependent on migrant remittance flows, which represent between 29 and 16 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP).

In other countries, like Ecuador, Mexico and El Salvador, remittance flows outstrip foreign direct investment, and in some cases they are equivalent to over 50 percent of total export revenues.

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