By MIRIAM JORDAN
The amount of money Latin American expatriates send home is expected to drop by 11% in 2009, as the global recession shrinks job opportunities for immigrants.
The projected decline to $62 billion this year from $69 billion in 2008 marks the first decline in global remittances to the region since the Inter-American Development Bank began tracking flows a decade ago. It also brings remittances to a level last seen in 2006.
About four million people across Latin America and the Caribbean will receive less money from their family members abroad, according to an IDB-commissioned survey to be released Wednesday by the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
A significant portion of money that relatives send home is used for daily necessities, such as food, shelter and clothing.
Remittances from the U.S. alone are expected to drop by 11% to about $42 billion this year. Currently, 12% of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. are unemployed. Work in the service industry and construction, which employ many Latino immigrants, has withered.
The survey, conducted in March to June in six major U.S. metropolitan areas, found that 25% of unemployed immigrants still send money home by dipping into their savings and reducing personal consumption.
About 12 million immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean who live in the U.S. send money home. The survey projects that nearly half of them will send less in 2009 than they did last year. In 2008, a similar study found that only 8% of immigrants would send less money home than the previous year.
Last year, immigrants averaged 15 money transfers; this year the average is expected to drop to 12. The average amount sent per transfer is expected to slip to $230 from $241.
A third of those surveyed said they would like to return to their home countries, up from 20% last year. Only 5% said they planned to do so because of lack of work in the U.S. Of those who said they might leave, 37% said they would consider returning to the U.S. "The data doesn't back up the notion that people are going home because of the crisis," said Gregory Francis Watson, a remittance specialist at the IDB.
However, immigrants are becoming poorer as they seek to survive in the U.S. and still support their relatives back home. "They don't have cars or own houses," says Manuel Orozco, the author of the report. "For the most part they keep cash in hand. If that goes away, they are going to come out of the recession more vulnerable."
Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are among countries most dependent on remittances, and thus most affected by a decline, the study found.
Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com
