Family Remittances: An Important Part of the Economy of Nicaragua

By Chuck Kaufman on April 11, 2018

Photo: Bill Hackwell

In 2017 Nicaraguans sent $1.3 billion in remittances to family back home. That’s a lot of money. It is half as much as the whole economy was worth 30 years ago during the time of the Revolutionary government when I got involved.

The most recent US census (2010) determined that there were 348,202 Nicaraguans in the US. I don’t know how they determined this since I can’t find a question about national origin on the 2010 census form, but let’s assume the census number is accurate. I wouldn’t anticipate that the numbers are much higher now given the last decade of economic growth and the recuperation of economic and social rights Nicaraguans lost during the neoliberal years starting in 1990. I should footnote here that the census number is a count of people. It says nothing about whether they are US citizens or what kind of immigration status they have or don’t have.

So using the unproven assumption that the Nicaraguan population in the US has stayed stable, dividing $1.3 billion by 348,202 people means that on average each Nicaraguan in the US sent home to family in Nicaragua, $3,733.47.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t save $3,733.47 last year. Most working class USers didn’t. Granted that a small number of Nicaraguans came here with ill-gotten wealth because they were part of the Somoza dictatorship or high-ranking officers in the National Guard, Somoza’s army, but I doubt that increases the average amount of remittance by more than a few bucks.

Nicaraguans who didn’t come here with wealth, often came here with nothing at all, like other migrants from Central America and Mexico. The 2,500 here with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which Trump recently stripped from them, were lucky to have the shirts on their backs following losing everything to Hurricane Mitch in 1999. And the fraction of Nicaraguans who are here without papers are probably not earning even minimum wage.

Yet combined, they sent home to their families $1.3 billion. I can only imagine the hard work and the hardship they endured to provide for their families at home. Actually I can imagine because I live in the Arizona border region and I can see how my Mexican neighbors and friends who were forced to migrate when NAFTA forced a million small farms out of production. Those farmers couldn’t earn a living, not because they were bad farmers but because they couldn’t compete against heavily tax-subsidized US agribusiness.

In order to send the amounts of money to support their families left behind, my neighbors from Mexico, and Nicaraguans too take any job they can find and are often cheated out of their already low wages. They often live with many people to a house so they can share the rent. They suffer other privations. Nicaraguans aren’t even unique. I could be writing a similar essay on the people from any country in the Global South.

Most people in the US don’t know what life is like for people who have to leave their homes when they can no longer feed their families where they live. Thanks to the Sandinista government, in the past 11 years the number of Nicaraguans fleeing economic destitution has dropped to a trickle. But if Nicaragua’s almost $14 billion economy were deprived of the $1.3 billion their compatriots are sending home, it would cause a major recession.

Due to institutional racism and the myth of US exceptionalism taught by our media and our schools, USers do not know why people come here for work. We don’t know how hard they work, and we don’t know how restricted their lives have to be in order for them to send money home so their families can eat.

It is a failure of the solidarity and immigrant rights movements that these stories aren’t told often enough. People who live in the United States need to know that most people in the world would rather stay home where they understand the culture and speak the language. Our families, friends and neighbors need to know that it is our trade policies, our military polices, our destruction of the environment, and our consumer culture that drives immigrants to migrate. It sends the wrong message to say that they migrate in search of a better life. It is more accurate to say they migrate for life itself

https://afgj.org/nicanotes-family-remittances-an-important-part-of-the-economy

Source: Nicanotes