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For first time ever, Mexicans are sending less money home
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jan 27, 2009 11:34pm |
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| Category | News |
| News Date | Wednesday, January 28, 2009 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Sara Miller Llana | Christian Science Monitor
MEXICO CITY — Over the past decade, entire towns in Mexico have been rebuilt with money sent from immigrants or migrant workers living in the U.S.
Now, for the first time since Mexico's Central Bank began keeping records (13 years ago), total annual remittances from the United States have fallen.
The numbers themselves, released by the Central Bank on Tuesday, are not dramatic. Mexicans sent $25 billion to their families in 2008, down from $26 billion the year before, representing a 3.6 percent decline.
But the break in the trend is significant, say economists. Less cash coming to low-income families who then spend it on goods and services, will mean more frugal spending, which will in turn be a further drag on the Mexican economy this year. And it will impact millions of families whose entire incomes depend on the dollars sent from men and women working as construction workers, lettuce pickers, and housekeepers from California to New York.
"This translates into social pressure," says Heliodoro Gil Corona, an economist at the School of Economists in the Mexican state of Michoacan. "It means a lack of employment. It means a lack of income. It even means more crime and insecurity."
Mexico's economy is in much better shape than in previous global economic downturns. While GDP is expected to remain stagnant or shrink here this year, in the past, when the U.S. was in a recession, the economy south of the border quickly followed. |
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