Mexican Immigrants' US Taxes Top Remittances
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November 19, 2009
| | A woman at an exchange house in Tenancingo, State of Mexico. Remittances from Mexicans in the U.S. totaled $26 bln in 2008. (Reuters/Henry Romero) | |
Mexico City - In 2008, Mexican immigrants living in the United States paid $53 billion in taxes, directly and indirectly, which is double the amount of remittances - about $26 billion - they sent home during the same period.
Jose´ Luis Ordaz, an economist and expert in migration and development from the BBVA-Bancomer Financial Group, said on Wednesday that Mexicans contribute to nearly 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.
Since the 1990s, he said, migration has accounted for the largest increase in the job force, and meets a large proportion of job demand where workers are scarce. Between 1994 and 2008, immigrants in the workforce grew to 45 percent, he added.
In that same period, Mexican immigrants totaled 17 percent of job demand in the country, a reflection of how immigrants in general contributed to sustaining economic growth, and perhaps curbing certain inflationary effects, Ordaz said. However, the effects of the current economic recession are greater than in the two previous recessions, in 1990 and 2001. Nearly 70 percent of jobs lost in the United States since the crisis began have been in the construction, trade and manufacturing sectors, precisely those that are made up mostly of immigrants, including Mexicans.
Adolfo Albo, the leading economist at BBVA-Bancomer Financial Group-Mexico, said that between 2007 and 2009, poverty in immigrants rose from 22.1 percent to 27.1 percent. More than 3.2 million immigrants are impoverished, Albo said. Of these, 1.5 million are women.
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