Posted on 09/28/2003 1:49:53 AM PDT by sarcasm
Money sent from Mexican workers in the U.S. to their families back home has reached a record $12 billion this year, Mexican President Vicente Fox said last week.
Remittances "are our biggest source of foreign income, bigger than oil, tourism or foreign investment," Fox told reporters after a meeting with Mexican-American businessmen in Manhattan.
"The 20 million Mexicans in the United States generate a gross product that is slightly higher than the $600 billion generated by Mexicans in Mexico," Fox said, adding that his country has the ninth-largest economy in the world.
"If we could add up the two products, Mexico would be the third or fourth economy in the world," he said.
Money transfers from Mexican immigrants working in the U.S. to relatives back home reached a previous high of $10 billion in 2002, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington.
Fox said the money transfers grew after Mexican consulates started giving identity cards to the nation's citizens in the U.S.
"The cards are working. All doubts have been cleared up," Fox said. "Almost 2.5 million people have them, and we want all Mexicans to have them."
The cards, known as matricula consular, allow holders to get driver's licenses in some states, open bank accounts and send money home. Police also have found them useful when arresting some illegal immigrants.
But critics have raised concerns over whether the cards provide legitimacy to illegal immigrants.
Fox was in New York, where Mexicans are the fastest-growing population group, to address the United Nations General Assembly.
A recent Columbia University study said New York's Mexican population had tripled since 1990 to between 275,000 and 300,000. The surge has made Mexicans the third-largest Latino group in the city, after Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.
About 80% of New York Mexicans were born outside the U.S.
Protesting program
Fox used his visit to New York to demand that the U.S. end a program that transports illegal immigrants who are chained together for hundreds of miles before they are deported back to Mexico.
The U.S. Border Patrol program called Lateral Repatriation aims to cut fatalities by moving immigrants caught in the Arizona desert to the border crossing in El Paso, Tex., making it hard for them to attempt to cross again.
Many immigrants have died from dehydration in the Arizona desert, which became a favorite entry point after the U.S. tightened border security in California and Texas.
Immigrants caught in Arizona are chained together and transported in conditions that Mexicans say are humiliating.
Fox said he would raise the question of migration with President Bush at next month's meeting of 21 world leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Thailand.
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