Hard Times at the Golden Door

In these tough economic times, millions of Latino immigrants have stopped sending money to their home countries, according to a survey released Wednesday. That is bad news for a lot of people.

Times Topics: Immigration and RefugeesThe survey, by the Inter-American Development Bank, found that only half of 18.9 million Latino immigrants in the United States send money to relatives abroad. Two years ago, 73 percent did. Some countries saw remittances fall after years of growth: money wired to Mexico declined nearly 3 percent for the first three months of this year from the same period last year, the first drop since Mexico started tracking transfers in 1995.

The survey found that the sagging economy and loss of low-wage jobs were mostly to blame, particularly the downturn in the housing industry, but that crackdowns on illegal immigration also played a role.

The report was full of bad news for immigrants, legal and not. Of the 5,000 Latinos surveyed — about half citizens and legal residents, and half undocumented immigrants — 81 percent said it was harder to find a good-paying job, and just under a third said they were thinking of leaving the country.

There are people on the restrictionist side of the immigration debate who will cheer the news, arguing for more of whatever is causing it. Thanks to people like them, the nation’s de facto immigration policy is to try to make life untenable for illegal immigrants, elevating their fear to shake them loose from the United States.Read the whole article here.
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