$23 billion sent to Mexico in '06
09:02 AM CST on Thursday, February 1, 2007
By Dianne Solis and Laurence Lliff / The Dallas Morning News
The amount of money that Mexican immigrants sent back to their homeland hit a record $23 billion in 2006 – suggesting a greater number of workers are sending more money home.
Immigration experts attributed last year's 15 percent rise to multiple factors, including increased migration, more generosity by immigrants and cheaper sending costs.
It was the fifth straight year that remittances have risen between 15 and 25 percent.
Some experts even cited deportation fears as a reason for the spikes.
"They used to spend more money here, but now they are saving every penny here and sending it down there," said Socorro Perales, a naturalized citizen who lives in Dallas and works among immigrants from the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
Ms. Perales regularly sends money to her grandmother in Zacatecas.
Mexico's Central Bank said in its quarterly report released Wednesday that reduced costs to send money – due to greater competition by banks and other businesses – are one reason for the increase.
For example, in 1999, the cost to send $300 from Dallas to Mexico was $27. Last year, that same transaction cost $11.50, the Central Bank said in its report.
The Central Bank said it has also done a better job counting the dollars sent home over the last several years.
Previously, there were more informal channels for sending money. Today, 98.5 percent of transfers are reported to the bank under stricter legal requirements, the bank said. It recorded six times more transactions in 2006 than it did in 1995.
Increasingly, the flow of money out of the country has been a source of rancor in the U.S.
State legislatures in Arizona and Texas have proposed taxing the money to pay for such social services as health care and education.
"The rapid rise in remittances during recent years is the result of both better registration of these transactions, as well as a genuine increase in these resources," the bank said in its report Wednesday.
Roberto Suro, director of the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, cautioned that increased migration alone can't explain the rise in money transfers.
He noted that Central Bank figures show a doubling of money transfers from $10 billion five years ago, and illegal immigration hasn't doubled in that time.
"I think it is more people sending more money," Mr. Suro said, "and it has gotten cheaper and easier to send money."
A survey by the Inter-American Development Bank to be released today estimates that Mexicans received $25 billion in 2006, $2 billion more than Mexico's Central Bank said in its report.
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