Foreshadowing an exodus

Today's Wall Street Journal is running an insightful piece on a relatively new development in US immigration policy: return migration. Faced with fewer economic opportunities, in part through tightening regulations and the overall economic slide, illegal immigrants are returning home. This, in turn, has a significant effect on the economies in their countries, who have long come to rely on remittances sent from relatives working the construction sites and factories in North America.

The article quotes a Pew Hispanic Center study, to be issued on October 2nd, according which “estimates that annual undocumented arrivals from Mexico are down about 25% this year from 2005, to about 350,000. Undocumented arrivals from Central America have been halved since then, to about 120,000.”

The long term impact on sending communities cannot yet be deduced. The World Bank, however, estimates that remittance flows are more than twice as large as total development aid and represent the largest source of foreign exchange for numerous countries. This means that the exodus to which the article alludes could seriously impact the prosperity and development of thousands of communities in developing countries in South America. This interactive graph shows the degree to which remittances are playing a role in supporting local communities.