How many of you know what remittances are? Some do and some don’t. For those of you that don’t, remittances is money that legal and illegal migrants send back to their home countries.
I know what you are thinking. How much money could we be possibly be talking about? Try 53 billion in just 2018 and that only includes the money sent to Mexico and other Central American countries. That money, which is generated by our economy and is sent to Mexico, comes directly from our GDP.
Total remittances to all countries in 2012 was $120 billion dollars. That amount has got to be much higher in 2018. Want to build the wall? Tax remittances. At just 3% and you could pay for the wall in just 4 years. Not just $5 billion but the entire $25 billion.
Legal and illegal migrants sent $53.4 billion in remittances back to Mexico and Central America in 2018, or more than double the cost of building a border barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a World Bank report.
Remittances to Mexico reached $33.7 billion in 2018, up 21 percent from roughly $27.8 billion in 2016, the bank reported.
Remittances from the three Central Americans countries are being spiked by the growing inflow of asylum-seeking migrants into blue-collar jobs throughout the U.S. economy, via the border’s catch-and-release laws. The outflow to Central America rose to $19.7 billion in 2018, up from $15.8 billion in 2016, according to the bank.
The outflow to Central America rose 25 percent in just two years.
GOP legislators have urged Congress to pay for the $22 billion border wall by taxing migrants’ remittances.
The money sent back from the United States to Central America includes many migrants’ payments to the cartels who traffic them into the U.S. economy. The trafficking debts can start at $5,000 per head.