For the third month in a row, remittances from Mexican workers to their native country dropped sharply.
Compared to April of 2024, per the Bank of Mexico, April remittances dropped 12.1 percent, which is the biggest year-over-year drop in 13 years.
Remittances to Mexico in April still totaled a staggering $4.76 billion, but that is down $380 million from the previous month’s $5.14 billion.
Throughout 2024, Mexico received $64.7 billion in overseas remittances, most of it from the United States (specifically Texas and California). That $64.7 billion represents about four percent of the overall Mexican GDP.
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“The April remittance data is terrible,” Banco Base economic analysis director Gabriela Siller said on X. She blamed both “the deterioration of the labor market in the U.S. and U.S. migrants’ fear of going out to work and sending their remittances, for fear of being deported.”
Yeah, well, the labor market is not deteriorating, sweetheart. Far from it.
On the horizon is a 3.5 percent tax on these remittances in President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. This tax is expected to bring $22.2 billion into the U.S. Treasury between 2026 and 2034. Those opposed to the tax laughably claim the tax will increase illegal immigration.
“It is important to note that remittances play a quiet but powerful role in reducing irregular migration,” reads a petition opposed to the tax. “By helping our families meet basic needs at home, we give them the chance to stay rooted in their communities, making them far less likely to undertake the dangerous journey north.”
Please.
Other than the free healthcare and welfare and housing and education and mail-in ballots offered by Democrat-run sanctuary cities, nothing fuels illegal immigration more than these remittances. The ability of illegal immigrants to send money back to their families in Mexico is what’s known as a magnet.
One of the reasons Mexico has been so historically lax in controlling the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. is how much its economy depends on these remittances.
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The harder we make it for illegals to send these remittances, the less of a magnet they will become. Anything that makes life more difficult and less profitable for illegal aliens, the better. The added benefit of making life intolerable for illegals is that these hardships encourage self-deportation, which saves taxpayers a fortune on deportation.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to confirm if the sender of a remittance is in the country legally. It’s too easy for an illegal to ask a legal immigrant or citizen to send the money on his behalf. But if illegal immigrants are worried about getting arrested at the remittance place? That’s how it should be.
ICE using remittances to track and deport illegals…? Sounds like a good idea to me.
That $64 billion should not be leaving the U.S. for Mexico. Rather, it should be going into the pockets of American workers and legal immigrants, not illegal workers.
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