Mexican Migrants Sent Record $36B In Remittances In 2019

Instability in Mexico and Latin America drove a wave of migrant workers to send a record amount of remittances to their home countries in 2019. Mexico’s Central Bank reported that Mexican migrants working overseas sent home a record-high $36 billion in remittances in 2019, a 7 percent increase from 2018.

According to a study from the Inter-American Dialogue, between 2016 and 2017, remittances to Mexico increased by 12 percent, a sharp rise from previous years.

States with the largest population of Mexican-born immigrants rank highest in remittance transfers. The states with the highest transfers include California ($8.84 billion), Texas ($4.3 billion), Illinois ($1.4 billion), New York ($1.8 billion), Florida ($1.15 billion), and Georgia ($1.0 billion). California accounted for nearly 29 percent of the total remittances to Mexico from 2014 to 2017. During this same time period, the percentage of the Mexican-born population in the U.S. dropped slightly by 1.3 percent while remittances spiked to nearly 8 percent.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Mexico transitioned from a closed economy to a market-oriented economy. Mexico further accelerated its market-based economy by entering into the NAFTA agreement in 1994 and exports became a major source of revenue. Still, Mexico is highly dependent on the United States for exports and remittances. Remittances replaced oil exports as Mexico’s largest source of foreign exchange, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

WNBA Headache Gets Bigger: More Sophie Cunningham Rallies Scheduled

Total Fraud: Adam Schiff Demands AI Political Parodies Be Banned, Forgets He Lied About Trump and Called It Parody in 2019

Hamas agrees to complete disarmament under ‘historic’ Gaza agreement: Trump

Schiff-backed candidate abruptly ends gubernatorial campaign amid rumblings of a damaging report

Watch: Chuck Schumer Gets in Shouting Match with Heckler During News Conference

Trump Announces Plan to Replace Illegal Alien Truckers with American Veterans

Trump promotes Freedom Haulers Initiative to fast-track military veterans into trucking jobs

Virginia university report finds officials did not disclose student’s terror conviction

Watch: Eagles Defensive Coordinator Repeatedly Mocks Fauci During News Conference

House panel demands classified briefings on noncitizen voting, alleged Chinese election interference

Georgia mother fights off alleged child snatcher with gas pump in surveillance video

Watch: Mamdani Is Open to Forcing New Yorkers to Pay Cash Reparations for Slavery, Says ‘We Were Very Complicit’

War powers resolution fails as Senate Republicans stand by Trump on Iran

Thousands of migrants bull-rush Spanish border, sparking ‘total humanitarian and social emergency’

Florida AG threatens Fauci investigation after Senate hearing

From foreign tourism, Mexico receives about $25 billion while only $22.4 billion in annual petroleum exports.

Mexico’s poverty rate remains high despite its openness to the international economic system. The poverty rate stands at 41.9 percent as of 2018 according to the International Monetary Fund. People working in the subsistence farming or informal sector of the economy are among Mexico’s poorest citizens and are especially reliant on remittances from the U.S. to pay for basic essential needs.

Remittance flows could remain high with Mexico’s economy projected to remain sluggish. The International Monetary Fund predicts meager economic growth for Mexico at 1 percent in 2020. Mexico’s 2019 third-quarter growth remained stagnant as well.

The rise in remittances from the United States to Mexico is happening alongside an overall downside trajectory in immigration from Mexican migrants to the U.S.

Across the wider Latin America region, remittances grew by 4.7 percent in 2019, according to a study published by Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances, and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue.