Originally posted by: dmcowen674
8-18-2007
Migrant cash is world economic giant
Around the world, millions of immigrants are sending billions of dollars back home.
One sweaty wad of bills or $200 Western Union moneygram at a time, they form what could be called Immigration, Inc. ? one of the biggest businesses on the planet.
Mass migration, they say, has spawned an underground economy of staggering proportions.
Globally, remittances ? the cash that immigrants send home ? totaled nearly $276 billion in 2006, the World Bank says. Remittances have more than doubled since 2000, and with globalization increasing the numbers of people on the move, there's no end in sight.
And unlike the conventional economy, more cash tends to change hands in an economic downturn, political crisis, natural disaster, famine or war.
Counterterrorism officials say al-Qaida and other groups are financed in part through informal money transfer networks called hawalas. Governments and the International Monetary Fund have been working to regulate those.
There are other downsides: fears of brain drains and a vast permanent army of economic exiles, and the untaxed earnings flowing out of host nations.
The U.S. lost $41.1 billion in 2005, according to the World Bank, while Switzerland watched $13.2 billion trickle out of the country that year.
Mexicans wire home the most cash ? nearly $22 billion ? most of it earned in the U.S.