Migrants living in the United States sent billions of dollars back to their home countries last year.
The World Bank compiled data on remittances sent by migrants in foreign nations and found roughly $103 billion was sent from the U.S. to six foreign nations that make up the top remittance routes. The report shows $19 billion in largely untaxed remittances were sent to China in 2019 and $38 billion to Mexico.
People in the Philippines received $14 billion from migrants in the U.S., $14 billion went to India, $10 billion to Guatemala, and $9 billion to Vietnam.
The news comes as many migrants lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic as the country faced widespread lockdowns to stem the spread of the outbreak. The World Bank estimates that money transferred to people in developing countries will drop by about 20% this year.
“There are households that critically depend on the remittance lifeline, and that lifeline has been ruptured,” Dilip Ratha, the lead economist on remittances at the World Bank, told the Wall Street Journal.
The expected drop in remittances this year is anticipated to be the largest dive since the 1980s when the World Bank first began recording such data.
Money sent to El Salvador and Bangladesh was already recorded dropping in April. Remittances dropped by 40% to $287 million in El Salvador that month, according to the data, and dropped by 24% in Bangladesh.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform reported in 2019 that immigrants in the U.S. send roughly $150 billion in untaxed remittances to their home countries annually.
“It only adds insult to injury when our state, local and federal governments allow income that could be taxed to reduce some of the costs associated with unchecked mass migration to simply flow out of the U.S. economy and into foreign pockets,” FAIR said in its report.
