Money Sent Home by Latin American Expatriates to Drop

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

Increased U.S. Military Presence in Colombia Could Pose Problems With Neighbors

By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela — A plan to increase the American military presence on at least three military bases in Colombia, Washington’s top ally in Latin America, is accentuating Colombia’s already tense relations with some of its neighbors.

Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, which are members of a leftist political alliance that is led by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and backed by his nation’s oil revenues, have all criticized the plan, saying it would broaden the military reach of the United States in the Andes and the Caribbean at a time when they are still wary of American influence in the region.

Despite a slight improvement in Venezuela’s relations with the United States in recent months, Mr. Chávez has been especially vocal in lashing out at the plan. Speaking on state television here on Monday night, he put Venezuela’s diplomatic ties with Colombia under review, calling the plan a platform for “new aggression against us.”

Colombia’s foreign minister, Jaime Bermúdez, on Tuesday defended the negotiations, which are expected to produce an agreement in August, asking neighboring countries not to interfere in Colombia’s affairs. “We never expressed our opinion in what our neighbors do,” he said, pointing to Mr. Chávez’s attempts to strengthen ties with non-Western nations. “Not even when the Russian presence became known in Venezuelan waters, or with relations with China,” he added.

The United States has been negotiating the increase of military operations in Colombia in recent weeks, faced with Ecuador’s decision to end a decade-long agreement allowing E-3 AWACs and P-3 Orion surveillance planes to operate from the Manta Air Base on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast.

While American antidrug surveillance flights would sharply increase in Colombia, the world’s top producer of cocaine, the agreement would not allow American personnel to take part in combat operations in the country, which is mired in a four-decade war against guerrillas. A limit of 800 American military personnel and 600 American military contractors would also remain in place, officials involved in the talks said.

Still, depending on how the accord is put in place, American troop levels in Colombia could climb sharply. The United States currently has about 250 military personnel in the country, deployed largely in an advisory capacity to Colombia’s armed forces, William Brownfield, the United States ambassador to Colombia, said last week.

Colombia, which has already received more than $5 billion in military and antidrug aid from the United States this decade, has found itself isolated diplomatically as Mr. Chávez presses ahead with his efforts to expand Venezuela’s oil diplomacy while eroding American influence in the hemisphere.

Other countries chafe at Colombia for different reasons. Colombia’s diplomatic relations with Ecuador have soured since Colombian forces carried out a raid on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebel camp on Ecuadoran territory last year. A festering boundary dispute with Nicaragua has also made for tensions between Colombia and Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, an ally of Mr. Chávez.

But with Venezuela itself, Colombia remains locked in a complex game of interdependence.

Its sales of manufactured and agricultural goods to Venezuela remain resilient despite Mr. Chávez’s occasional outbursts directed at his ideological opposite, Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe. And faced with disarray in its oil industry, Venezuela relies on imports of Colombian natural gas, narrowing the possibility of a severe deterioration in ties between the two countries despite their sharply different views of cooperation with the United States.