“The global economic crisis has devastated workers around the world, none more than migrants whose daily wages are dependent on the whims of global financiers. Witness Dubai. Even before the meltdown of Dubai World, migrants whose labor literally built Dubai from the ground up suffered serious job losses with the onset of the global recession in 2008.
“Remittances are expected to decline from $308 billion worldwide in 2008 to $293 billion in 2009, due to the global financial crisis. Many countries have experienced declines, particularly in Central and Latin America where workers’ fates are tied to the U.S. economy: Mexico (-11%), Guatemala (-13%), Honduras (-13%) and El Salvador (-13%). Some countries in South Asia, however, did experience an influx of money from workers abroad: Bangladesh (+22%) and Pakistan (+21%).
“Remittances are not small change. At $300 billion a year, remittances represent profits that could form the third largest company in the world. The world’s 200 million migrants form a population large enough to constitute the world’s fifth largest country. Any solution to what ails the global economy must take into account the labor of migrant workers.”
The United Nations in its UN Human Development Report asserts that ‘migration is not an individual choice but a matter of economic necessity.’ As a socioeconomic phenomenon, migration is obviously triggered by lack of employment opportunities and general poverty in the migrants’ countries of origin.
But while the world reeled under the tremendous pressure of a global economic downturn that saw migrant incomes dip, along with job losses, slower migration, and continued deportation, migrant remittances sent back to their home countries did not experience a decline.
As economic realities became dire in their impoverished countries of origin, migrant workers pumped in the last of their hard-earned money into their home economies to help save their families from destitution in the face of global recession, thus helping save the economies in general.
