Read this: Immigrants in Illinois export $1.5 billion to kin

[iconoclastic cat]

I came across this article in the Chicago Tribune:

Immigrants in Illinois export $1.5 billion to kin

By Oscar Avila
Tribune staff reporter

May 18, 2004

It isn't news to Luz Lopez that immigrants in Illinois are a financial pipeline to their families back home.

Lopez works for Remesas Universal, a wire-transfer company that has nearly 100 clients a day at its Little Village branch. And Lopez sees how her family dutifully sends about $300 every month to her grandmother in Mexico, even though none of them makes much more than minimum wage.

For the first time on Monday, international banking officials released data on how much Illinois immigrants send to Latin America. The total this year will be more than $1.5 billion, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, a regional lending institution similar to the World Bank.

(snip)

Some critics of immigration say the remittance data shoot down the notion that immigrants are contributors to the U.S. economy.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes increased immigration, said the study showed that, by sending money home, immigrants are "merely perpetuating a culture of emigration and dependency in those countries, while imposing tremendous burdens on American workers and taxpayers."

(snip)

more at http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0405180372may18,1,6621136.story?coll=chi-news-hed

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To be honest, I am quite surprised that the Trib only dedicated a few sentences to the anti-immigration faction, especially when the recent primaries in IL featured Jim Oberweis in helicopter, chasing after "ten thousand immigrants today, and the next day, and the next day...." There is a lot of overt racism against Latinos in Chicago, especially in the schools.

This article, on the other hand, seems to be going out of its way to avoid addressing the anti-immigration, anti-ESL program, racist propaganda that I hear all the time in Chicago.

I suppose my concern here is that if people do not take the time to look at the facts behind the statistics, some of the radical ideas may start to seem rational to the mainstream. Yes, I know, like we need another boneheaded idea to refute--I just have a feeling that this is a taste of something yet to come, if we are not careful.

[cheezus]

1. they are adding their labor to the economy

Who cares if they send money home. Where do you think the money goes when you buy products of/from a multinational?

Yet another election year let's scapegoat the immigrants for the poor economy