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About remittances. In general, when you feed poor people, the only thing you get is more poor people. The average remittance is about $1,000/yr, so you would not really expect that to buy much more than some tamales and beans. It may just create what is known as the phenomenon of rising expectations which can be very explosive in Latin America. People get the idea that their lives could be better without any real understanding of what it would take to make it so.

"The average remittance is about $1,000/yr, so you would not really expect that to buy much more than some tamales and beans."

$1,000.00/yr is a butt-load of cash for most of these folks. I seem to recall several years ago when I was down in Honduras building a road that folks would stand in line for several hours waiting to get day-labor at our base-camp. The daily rate was 15 Limpiras per day ($3.00)

Greenbacks still go a long way. Therein lies the danger - when complete national economies rely on remittances as a significant percentage of their GNP, if said remittances dry up due to these folks getting locked up, deported, etc. it has the potential to wreck these economies, further exacerbating an already bad situation.

I am in no way in favor of illegal immigration. What has to be done is document these folks in the States. get them to pay taxes and their fair share of the burden and THEN they can send their remittances.