Pollster Sergio Bendixen (left) and general manager of the Multilateral Investment Fund, Donald F. Terry present the results of a 2008 survey on remittances from the United States to Latin America at a news conference held at the National Press Club in Washington DC Wednesday. - contributed
A new poll commissioned by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) has found that fewer migrants are remitting funds to the region, as the crawling US economy devours jobs and erodes income.
"Starting in 2000, remittances from the United States to Latin America grew steadily, as more immigrants sent more money more often to their relatives back home," said MIF General Manager Donald Terry at a news conference in Washington.
"During the past several months, however, this pattern has changed dramatically."
The poll found that 23 per cent fewer workers were remitting funds regularly to families than two years ago.
That 23 per cent represents more than five million people, based on 2004 data showing that LAC immigrants in the US topped 18.6 million, of which 3.3 million were from the Caribbean.
The majority of MIF's survey respondents, or 81 per cent of the 5,000 migrants polled in February, said good-paying jobs were harder to find now than a year ago.
Forty per cent said they were making less money.
But the MIF, a unit of the Inter-American Development Bank, which released the results of the survey in Washington Wednesday, predicts that flows will in 2008, "remain largely unchanged" from the past two years.
Frequent sending
The agency said that while fewer migrants were transferring funds, they were sending more frequently and in larger amounts, and that transfers would amount to US$45.9 billion in the current period.
But: "If the current trend holds over the next year, we would expect millions of families throughout Latin America who until recently had been receiving remittances to fall below the poverty line," Terry said.
Worldwide remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean hit a new high of US$66.5 billion in 2007, but growth of seven per cent was well below the double digit average within the decade.
The World Bank, which estimated annual remittance growth within the 2000 to 2006 period at 19 per cent, has taken note.
While its estimate of transfers was lower at US$60 billion, the bank suggested last month that to maximise cross-border money flows, governments within this region should reshape remittance policies to make it less costly for migrants to send funds home, and easier for recipients to collect the funds by opening up the sector to more participation from banks and community-based financial institutions.
The United States is the largest originator of remittances to Latin American and Caribbean, according to MIF estimates.
The MIF in its last poll in 2006 then found that 73 per cent of Latin American migrants sent funds regularly to their families.
Circumstances
In the February survey, done by pollster Sergio Bendixen, the numbers were down to 50 per cent.
MIF's first remittance poll was done in 2001. Then, the agency said, only one-third of respondents linked their circumstances to US immigration policies.
Now, in a total reverse of those sentiments, more than two-thirds or 68 per cent of the surveyed group said they were concerned about discrimination and have also linked their declining economic fortunes to a harsher anti-immigration climate.
"The survey clearly indicates that millions of Latin American immigrants are now fearful about their futures in the United States, and no longer feel that they can afford to send remittances to their families," said Bendixen.
According to the IDB, the typical immigrant from Latin America is unskilled.
Among the survey's respondents, the average monthly income was about US$160 in their home countries, while in the United States, they make an average US$1,600 a month, said an IDB press release.
The 2008 survey on remittances to Latin America was conducted by telephone and has a margin of error of 1.4 per cent, said the IDB.
business@gleanerjm.com
