Western Union Empire Moves Migrant Cash Home

[kskiska]

Source: NYT

To glimpse how migration is changing the world, consider Western Union, a fixture of American lore that went bankrupt selling telegrams at the dawn of the Internet age but now earns nearly $1 billion a year helping poor migrants across the globe send money home.

Migration is so central to Western Union that forecasts of border movements drive the company’s stock. Its researchers outpace the Census Bureau in tracking migrant locations. Long synonymous with Morse code, the company now advertises in Tagalog and Twi and runs promotions for holidays as obscure as Phagwa and Fiji Day. Its executives hail migrants as “heroes” and once tried to oust a congressman because of his push for tougher immigration laws.

“Global migration is the cornerstone of how we’ve grown,” said Christina A. Gold, Western Union’s chief executive.

With five times as many locations worldwide as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Burger King and Wal-Mart combined, Western Union is the lone behemoth among hundreds of money transfer companies. Little noticed by the public and seldom studied by scholars, these businesses form the infrastructure of global migration, a force remaking economics, politics and cultures across the world.

Last year migrants from poor countries sent home $300 billion, nearly three times the world’s foreign aid budgets combined.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/world/22western.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[Reno.Muse]

1. Give me a break! This is not breaking news! Anyone who lives in a town

in America for the past few decades where poor Mexicans live knows they use Western Union to move money to family. What the hell would they have done? Gotten a checking account for it.

[DRoseDARs]

2. Calm down there, fellow Renoite. As you pointed out, not everyone lives near migrant populations...

...or are otherwise not well-versed in the realities of a migrant's life.

[NovaNardis]

3. I consider myself well versed on immigration issues

I'm taking a course on Immigration and Identity Politics this semester. I know that doesn't make me an expert, but it gives me a nice base of information to add to the things I already knew. And it is astounding to me to see how many remittances are sent and how they affect the world economy. So I think this sufficiently qualifies as news.

It's much better than a lot of what else the traditional media reports on.

(HAHA! Funny side story. I'm watching a rerun of the Flyers-Hurricanes game. And I hear from the TV, clear as day, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" And the TV announcer says, calmly, "Obviously someone from the 'Canes disagrees with the call.)

[trof]

4. My local Winn-Dixie has Western Union

at the customer service counter.
Almost every time I'm in there their are 2 or 3 people evidently from somewhere south of the border buying money orders.

[treestar]

5. Migration is not changing the world

Migration has always happened and always will. It is part of the human condition and should be accepted as such. It is never a crisis. It explains why you live in America. Even if you are a Native American, your ancestors migrated from Asia.

[Zorra]

6. Here's a different perspective from Subcomandante Marcos.

It's best to read the entire essay to put this piece into perspective, but this piece is thought provoking in itself.

THE THIRD PIECE MIGRATION, THE ERRANT NIGHTMARE.
snip---
"From the American Rio Grande to the "European" Schengen space, a double contradictory tendency is confirmed. On one side the borders are closed officially to the migration of labor, on the other side entire branches of the economy oscillate between instability and flexibility, which are the most secure means of attracting a foreign labor force" (Alain Morice, Op. Cit.).

With different names, under a judicial differentiation, sharing an equality of misery, the migrants or refugees or displaced of all the world are "foreigners" who are tolerated or rejected. The nightmare of migration, whatever its causes, continues to roll and grow over the planet's surface. The number of people who are accounted for in the statistics of the UN High Commission on Refugees has grown disproportionately from some 2 million in 1975 to 27 million in 1995.

With national borders destroyed ( for merchandise) the globalized market organizes the global economy: research and design of goods and services, as well as their circulation and consumption are thought of in intercontinental terms. For each part of the capitalist process the "new world order" organizes the flow of the labor force, specialized or not, up to where it is necessary. Far from subject ing itself to the "free flow" so clucked-over by neoliberalism, the employment markets are each day determined more by migratory flows. Where skilled workers are concerned, whose numbers are not significance in the context of global migration, the "crossing of brains" represents a great deal in terms of economic power and knowledge. Nevertheless, whether skilled labor, or unskilled labor, the migratory politics of neoliberalism is oriented more towards destabilizing the global labor market than towards stopping immigration.

The Fourth World War, with its process of destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reorganization provokes the displacement of millions of people. Their destiny is to continue to wander, with the nightmare at their side, and to offer to employed workers in different nations a threat to their employment stability, an enemy to hide the image of the boss, and a pretext for giving meaning to the racist nonsense promoted by neoliberalism.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3849/marcos_7pieces.html