Thread: Latino workers send $60 billion home

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Latino workers send $60 billion home

October 19, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Latin Americans working outside their countries will send $60 billion home this year, a 12 percent increase over 2005, the Inter-American Development Bank said Wednesday.
The bulk of the money, an estimated $45 billion, is being sent by the 12.6 million immigrants from Latin America who ship money home regularly from the United States, the organization said in a report based on surveys of immigrants in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

Bank officials, who have been studying the flow of money since 2000, said the potential for the money fueling development south of the border is limited.

The estimated 30 million families receiving the money across Latin America usually have only limited access to banks and other means of saving, and they mostly use the cash for basic necessities.

''Much more needs to be done to leverage these resources, and, particularly, to provide transnational families with access to the financial system,'' bank President Luis Alberto Moreno said.

To aid that effort, the Mexican government announced a push to offer loans for migrants in the U.S. to build homes in their native Mexico, in hopes they will return home eventually and meanwhile to create jobs in Mexico.

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