We need a Good-Neighbor policy!

The flow of tens of billions of dollars in remittances sent home to Mexico and other Ibero-American countries by migrant workers in the United States, is drying up, according to official statistics provided by Mexico's Central Bank and a recent study issued by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). After rising at the rate of nearly 20% per year between 1994 and 2006, remittances stalled out in 2007, and in the first quarter of 2008 fell by 3%, compared to the same period in 2007.

Total remittances to Ibero-America were about $46 billion in 2007, with a little over half of that amount ($24 billion) going to Mexico. Entire communities, states, and even nations have become dependent on the flow of remittances, as genocidal British free trade and globalization policies forced huge chunks of the populations of these nations (30% in the case of El Salvador; 10% in the case of Mexico) to flee to the United States in desperate search of survival for themselves, and their families back home.

Now, the collapse of the U.S. "importer of last resort" means that starvation and chaos will be visited on the nations of Ibero-America--exactly as Lyndon LaRouche warned would occur, if the insane British economic policies were not changed. A recent Bank of Mexico study reported that 86% of all remittances are used by the families back in Mexico for basic "sustenance," i.e. survival.

The recent quarterly trend in remittances sent to Mexico tells part of the story:

2Q '06 = 21%

3Q '06 = 13%

4Q '06 = 8%

1Q '07 = 3%

2Q '07 = -1%

3Q '07 = 3%

4Q '07 = 0%

1Q '08 = -3%

But the reality is actually much worse than these average figures suggest. According to the IADB, although the total dollar amount of remittances to Ibero-America has stagnated or fallen somewhat, the number of workers who send money back home "regularly" fell dramatically from 12.6 million in 2006, to 9.4 million in the first quarter of 2008--i.e., 3.2 million workers stopped sending money regularly. In percentage terms, 73% of all Ibero-American born adults in the U.S. were sending money home regularly in 2006, whereas in 2008 that had fallen to only 50%. This is a tectonic shift in economic activity of nearly 25% of the Hispanic migrants in the U.S.

According to the IADB, 3.2 million fewer remitters translates into some 10 million people back home no longer receive support for their most essential "sustenance." The agency estimates that some 2 million families will, as a result fall below the poverty line, mainly in Mexico.

Ironically, this will lead to more people trying to flee their countries to come to the United States in search of survival--at exactly the point that the economic collapse and viciously anti-immigrant policies in the U.S. are expected to lead to the expulsion from the U.S. of up to 2 million people in the near term.

The shock front has hit.

copied from
http://www.larouchepac.com