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Migrants' cash going home is in the billions

If immigrant workers incorporated, they'd be at No. 3 on the Fortune 500 list, experts say.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 19, 2007

TIRANA, Albania - Josif Poro pats his new sofa, points with pride to his carpets and runs a wrinkled hand over a gleaming white refrigerator.

He and his wife barely scrape by on their $220 monthly pension. They would have to do without many of the items in their cramped apartment if their son, a factory worker in Greece, didn't faithfully send home part of his earnings.

"We call him our golden boy," said Poro, 83, a retired textile mill worker.

Around the world, millions of immigrants are sending billions of dollars back home.

One wad of bills or $200 MoneyGram at a time, they form what could be called Immigration Inc. - one of the biggest businesses on the planet.

Experts tracking the phenomenon say they have gotten a much clearer picture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when authorities trying to cut the flow of cash to jihadists began taking a harder look at how immigrants move their money around.

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.

If these guest workers incorporated as a company, their migrant multinational would rank No. 3 on the Fortune 500 list, trailing only Wal-Mart and ExxonMobil in annual revenue.

Remittances "are larger than direct foreign investment in Mexico, tea exports in Sri Lanka, tourism revenue in Morocco, and revenue from the Suez Canal in Egypt," said World Bank economist Dilip Ratha recently.

The United States lost $41.1-billion in 2005, according to the World Bank, while Switzerland watched $13.2-billion trickle out of the country that year.

Meanwhile, from Poland to the Philippines, remittances are throwing lifelines to families combating poverty and helping to keep some national economies afloat:

- In Latin America, remittances hit $62-billion last year and are projected to top $100-billion by 2010, the Inter-American Development Bank says.

- India is the world leader in remittances, taking in $23.7-billion in 2005 and an estimated $26.9-billion last year, the World Bank says.

- Immigrants from Albania, one of Europe's poorest countries, will send more than $1.3-billion back to their homeland this year. That's 13 percent of Albania's GDP.

"Without the money we get from our son, who lives and works in Austria, my family and I would simply starve to death," said Jovana Acimovic, a housewife in Belgrade, Serbia.

In Albania, where the average monthly wage is only $250, a third of the population of 3.2-million have left for better jobs in the United States, Britain, Greece, Italy and elsewhere.

Many have no plans to return, but others return to buy homes and open businesses. Nearly one in three Albanian real estate transactions involves an expatriate buying property back home.

Some say remittances have their downside.

Much of the world's migration is illegal, and although many immigrants work at menial jobs, some are doctors, engineers and other professionals. Their departure can mean a brain drain of highly trained personnel and create an immigration culture.

Elvin Meka, secretary-general of the Albanian Association of Banks, offers a blunt warning: "We export human beings, and they send us cash," he said. "Young people are addicted to the idea of leaving. That's the biggest crime in this country. The government is killing their dreams."

But for Ismet and Safija Helja, retired in impoverished Bosnia, the cash their carpenter son, Nedzad, sends from America boils down to this: not having to eat at a soup kitchen.

Like clockwork, it arrives every three months. "Sometimes $1,000, sometimes $500, depending how good he does," said Ismet Helja, 67.

"If it wasn't for Nedzad's money," he said, "we would die."

[Last modified August 19, 2007, 02:16:20]