Immigration: How to win over Latin America

“US lawmakers can send a powerful message to Latin Americans by reaching a compromise on immigration reform before the US Senate votes on the issue ”” a vote originally scheduled for last week but postponed.

Hispanics make up three quarters of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the US, and many of them send large sums of money home to their families. Legal and illegal Latin American migrant workers living in the US send home US$45 billion per year, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. This money represents almost 30 times the amount of annual US bilateral aid to the region. Furthermore, unlike official bilateral aid or free trade packages, remittances sent back to Latin America by migrants living in the US have an immediate, grassroots economic impact on millions of people throughout the region.”

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