Latin Immigrants’ Fund Transfers Tracked in Study

In what may be the first comprehensive study of its kind, a new report shows that immigrants from Mexico and four other Latin American nations sent $4 billion to their families in their homelands in 1990, an amount exceeding the U.S. foreign aid to those countries.

The report, to be released today by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, found that the transfer of money from the U.S. to Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Dominican Republic and El Salvador quintupled from 1980 to 1990, far outstripping the population and income growth of those immigrant groups in the U.S.

Those five countries account for two-thirds of the Latin American foreign-born population in the U.S. Between 1980 and 1990, their numbers grew from 2.7 million to 5.6 million. About half of them live in California.

Harry Pachon, president of the institute, which is affiliated with the Claremont Graduate School, said he was “amazed” at the value of remittances, which he noted were continuing to grow at a steady pace into the ‘90s. Previous work by academics has focused primarily on transfer of funds to Mexico, and some have estimated remittances between $2 billion and $4 billion for Mexico alone.

Researchers at Tomas Rivera, who spent more than six months on the study, estimated that $2.5 billion was sent by Mexican immigrants to their homeland in 1990. The researchers based their numbers on data from the World Bank and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The study found that Mexican immigrants sent an average of 8% of household income to relatives in Mexico.