Mexico's private sector foresees $10 billion in remittances

www.quepasa.com ^ | December 7, 2002 | NA

[B4Ranch]

Mexico City, Mexico, December 7, 2002

The amount of money sent by Mexicans living in the United States to relatives back home may reach $10 billion in 2002, the Center for Private Sector Economic Studies (CEESP) said Saturday.

Remittances from emigrants represent Mexico's fourth-largest source of foreign exchange, after assembly industry exports, oil and direct foreign investment.

The CEESP study released Saturday said that last year's remittances from Mexicans living in the United States reached a record $8.89 billion.

The amount of money sent has increased significantly in recent decades, the study said, noting that the figure for 2001 was three times that of 1980.

"Technological advances have boosted remittances due to the increased speed and security with which funds can be transferred," the CEESP noted.

Remittances are an important source of income for several Mexican states, which, according to the study, shows the country has been unable to create enough jobs to keep citizens from having to immigrate to the United States in search of a better life.

"Remittances reflect a domestic structural problem with employment that has resulted in a constant stream of Mexicans crossing the border to look for jobs," the study explained.

"This situation is paradoxical," it added, "because it is specifically this domestic structural problem that has created an important source of income for the economy."

According to U.S. State Department figures, 14.9 million Mexicans were residing in the United States last year, 10.3 million of which were employed. EFE

[B4Ranch]

Mr. President,

This represents $10 billion in wages that could have kept American citizens employed. $10 billion of which some would have undoubtably gone into the stockmarket and kept America's economy out of the gutter.

Are you listening, Sir?

[Cicero]

It doesn't sound like a very good deal to me. We send our jobs to Mexico, and Mexican workers come here to take our jobs too.

Free market economics has always struck me as something like getting hooked on drugs. The initial effect is to pump up the economy and make everyone better off, but the long-range effects are like drug dependency. With tarriff barriers the United States would probably be a smaller, poorer country, but more self-sufficient and far less vulnerable to unpredictable surges of international money.

[anobjectivist]

My personal objection to free-market economics is that we are not on a level playing field. We are the only country in the world with a constition based on capitalism.

[Tacis]

Yeah, but a cut of this $10 billion and most of the revenue from the drugs goes into the pockets of Presidente Fox and his drug lord friends and employers. Lots of local hoods and politicians earn their comfortable livings skimming from this cash flow. They would otherwise have to come to the US to conduct their criminal activity.

[rovenstinez]

Or for us here in Mexico, that would be 100 billion pesos,

[Mulder]

The best thing we can do for Mexico is to invade it, and push all the third-worlders further towards the equator.

The next best thing we can do for Mexico is to kick out all the illegal immigrants, give them a copy of the Constitution and Declraration of Independence, and a surplus WWII rifle. If they want to live in a Free country, let them earn it, like our Founders had to do.

[Jarhead_22]

Are you listening, Sir?

Unfortunately, I don't think he is.

[FITZ]

I think that $10 billion is just from what illegals send back to their families. The drug cartel money is counted separately and of course is much much higher. 10 million illegals sending home $100 a month each would account for the $10 billion. You know the drug cartels are bringing in quite a lot more.

[BfloGuy]

With tarriff barriers the United States would probably be a smaller, poorer country

Right, just like Mexico.

[B4Ranch]

Maybe a smaller poorer country wouldn't have it's pocket raided by the United Nations, wouldn't have the rest of the world looking at us with their hands out, wouldn't be the final goal for all of the world emigrants.

Notice the direction of travel in this definition.

emigration

\Em`i*gra"tion\, n. [L. emigratio: cf. F. ['e]migration.] 1. The act of emigrating; removal from one country or state to another, for the purpose of residence, as from Europe to America, or, in America, from the Atlantic States to the Western.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=emigration&db=*

[gubamyster]

Free market economics has always struck me as something like getting hooked on drugs.

"The drug" the illegals are hooked on are the social services, anchor babies & incentives to come to America. All these undermine free market economics and relegate the concept to textbook scenarios.