The National Population Council informed that 5.7% of Mexican homes receive remittances from the Mexican Paisanos living in the United States, which constitutes approximately 1,500,000 homes in the country. About 20% of the adult Mexican population has received remittances from a Paisano that works in the United States.
Estimates from the Census Bureau in the United States indicate that from 1993 to 2003 the number of paisanos born in Mexico and which live in the United States increased from 4.3 million to 9.9 million. Approximately 12% of this amount has left Mexico within the last three years.
The Mexican Gross National Product (GNP) for the first three years of Fox’s presidency term has been the lowest during the same time period of the last 50 years.
The unemployment rate in these first three years of Fox’s term is the highest in the last three presidency terms.
Some states, like Veracruz, were once very rich, but have now become the leading states in people leaving the country, where year after year growing amounts of Paisanos leave to go the United States searching for better opportunities.
Other states, like Michoacan, where there is a deep and old cultural ancestry and a proud past, now subsist mostly on the remittances sent by the Paisanos. Michoacan received 1,685 million dollars in 2003.
The rural communities in Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato and other states with populations with less than 2,500 people live on what their relatives send them.
The Mexican Paisano remittances are mostly used to maintain the family, to pay for the children’s education, to improve the home or to start a small business which create work opportunities and create a driving force that keep these small communities going.
Imagine for a moment what would happen if all of a sudden the government was left without the income brought in by petroleum. The result would put an immediate stop in the debt payment, a sharp increase in the rate of exchange and a bankruptcy worse than that seen in Argentina in recent years.
Now imagine what would happen if the Mexican Paisanos did not send remittances to Mexico. Not a single dollar. The result would be the immediate economic downfall of hundreds of thousands of homes, millions of people would suffer hunger and despair, and in several days there would be a social explosion. This is what has been avoided by the remittances sent by the Mexican Paisanos back to a country that denied them opportunities.
By Reynaldo NuncioDirector