Recently, The Donald has explained how he would pay for his Wall with Mexico. Tax—or confiscate—to the tune of $5 to 10 billion per year the flow of immigrant transfers back to their relatives in Mexico until the Mexican government agrees to pay for the Wall.
It is hard imagine a more heavy-handed, heartless, and potentially counter-productive policy. If this is an example, the Lord only know what other terrible “specific” proposals Trump would come up with.
Remittances have a long history, going back to the era of mass European immigration to the U.S. They were especially important for countries like Italy, from which a substantial minority of the immigrants to the U.S. were “birds of passages,” circulating back-and-forth across the Atlantic, depending on economic conditions, and sending money back to the home country for their families when they were working in the U.S. Jews tended to come to the U.S. on a one-shot basis, bringing their families ASAP, yet remittances also flowed from Jewish immigrants back to Eastern Europe.
After World War II, the flow became even more important, first to war-torn or underdeveloped European economies including surprisingly Spain, but then to the rest of the world, especially Asia and Latin America. China at $70 billion and India at $64 billion top the list of countries receiving remittances, with Mexico in the top five at around $27 billion.
Before there was foreign aid, remittances were the primary source of humanitarian relief for many poor countries, given on a person-to-person and family-to family basis. Since World War II, they have been regularized and expanded into an important supplement to foreign development aid. Mexico has been a prime beneficiary. Remittances not only help poor families, but create jobs in the home countries, reducing the flow of immigrants—legal and illegal—to the U.S.
Actually, the flow of remittances to Mexico has been in gradual decline, partly because of Mexican economic growth, U.S. economic labor market sluggishness, and the tendency of tougher border controls to slow the back-and-forth flow of money and people across our Southern border.
Building a Wall might further reduce the flow of remittances, as would of course Trump’s proposal, but at a high humanitarian and economic cost.
It is true that remittances are not without problems. Money laundering and even potential terrorist financing among them. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison runs interference for Minneapolis’ Somali community, despite some legitimate concerns that Somali American money as well as Al Shabab recruits are flowing from the U.S. into Africa.
Trump wants to use a section of the post 9/11 Patriot Act to target, not Muslim terrorists, but Mexico and Mexican-born U.S. residents who, according to some studies, send back some 10 percent of their income to relatives across the border. It should be noted that, though Mexicans are the target now, in the future Muslim Americans—and American Jews generous to Israel—could be under executive orders expanding application to the Patriot Act to remittance and investment outflows.
What a cruel and dangerous proposal from Trump who says that his ideas come from his “great brain.” Too bad we can’t remit his cerebrum to outer space for the extraterrestrials to fix for the betterment of the universe.
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