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 Editorials | Issues | November 2007 
Flow of Migrant Money to Mexico Stalls
 Elisabeth Malkin - New York Times
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 |  | A dragging U.S. economy and a campaign against undocumented workers are key reasons why Mexican migrants' remittances home have leveled off. |  | |
El Rodeo, Mexico - For years, millions of Mexican migrants working in the United States have sent money back home to villages like this one, money that allows families to pay medical bills and school fees, build houses and buy clothes or, if they save enough, maybe start a tiny business.
But after years of strong increases, the amount of migrant money flowing to Mexico has stagnated. From 2000 to 2006, these remittances grew to nearly $24 billion a year from $6.6 billion, increasing more than 20 percent some years. In 2007, the increase so far has been less than 2 percent.
Migrants and migration experts say a flagging American economy and an enforcement campaign against undocumented workers in the United States have persuaded some migrants not to try to cross the border illegally to look for work. Others have decided to return to Mexico. And many of those who are staying in the United States are sending less money home.
In the rest of the world, remittances are surging, up as much as 10 percent a year, according to Donald F. Terry of the Inter-American Development Bank. Last year, migrant workers worldwide sent more than $300 billion to developing countries - almost twice the amount of foreign direct investment.
But in Mexico, families are feeling squeezed.
Estrella Rivera, a slight 27-year-old in this stone-paved village in Guanajuato state in west-central Mexico, was hoping to use the money her husband, Alonso, sent back from working illegally in Texas to build a small clothing shop at the edge of her garden. But a month ago, Alonso Rivera returned home. His hours at a Dallas window-screen factory were cut back and there was speculation that he would inevitably have to produce a valid Social Security number.
Now, he works odd jobs or tends the cornfields. Estrella Rivera's shop is indefinitely delayed, a pile of red bricks stacked on the grass.
RETURNING HOME
Like Alonso Rivera, some of the men who went to work in the United States illegally have returned discouraged. And less work means less money to send home - particularly from the Southern United States and other areas where Mexican migrants are a more recent presence.
"One out of three people in these new states who was sending a year ago is not sending it home today," Terry said. "There are some 500,000 families who aren't receiving this year."
Until last year, the American housing trades absorbed hundreds of thousands of new Hispanic migrants, and the hardships of the trip north seemed to pale beside the near certainty of finding work.
Now, the construction slump - along with a year-old crackdown on illegal immigration at the border and in the workplace, and mounting anti-immigrant sentiment in places - has made it even harder for the Mexican migrant to reach the United States and land a well-paying job.
Many experts say it is too early to know whether the negligible increase in remittances will be sustained. Some argue it was to be expected: Much of the initial spike in money transfers was a result of better accounting. In addition, earlier waves of migrants are returning to the houses they have built, or they have managed to legalize their status in the United States and bring their families, sending less money back.
AT THE BORDER
But the events of the past year in the United States, political and economic, have also clouded the prospects of many illegal Mexican workers. New walls, new guards and new equipment at the border have dissuaded many from trying to cross and raised the cost for those who try to as much as $2,800. Workplace raids and stories of summary deportations stoke fears among Mexicans on both sides of the border.
Referring to tougher measures in the United States, Primitivo Rodríguez, a Mexican immigration expert, said: "Psychologically, they lead you to save money in case of an emergency. You send less, you save more."
The shakier economy in many states means that migrants have moved from well-paying steady jobs to work as day laborers.
In Guanajuato state, remittances have created a peculiar economy in villages tucked among rolling corn- and sorghum fields. There are few jobs, yet many houses have stereo systems, washing machines and three-piece living room sets.
Things are changing, though. Some of the men are back and need cash for seeds and fertilizer to plow long-neglected fields. At the microcredit association operated by the nonprofit group Bajio Women's Network, loans for agriculture, which barely existed last year, now account for 11 percent of all borrowing. |
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