[–]17938488?0 points
2 points
2 points
(+2|-0)
ago
Let’s remember what remittance payments are: Funds being sent out of our country by aliens, often illegal aliens who send a portion of the wages from their unauthorized employment back to their home countries, usually to support family.
Laudable as this may be from the context of personal and familial responsibility, Americans need to realize, first, that once the money has left our economy, it is gone forever; and second, that we're not talking about chump change, we're talking about tens of billions of dollars each year. The amount may actually be even more massive than the official numbers, because U.S. data collection on remittances has not been completely reliable.
In a one-step-removed sense, taxing remittances would in fact be a levy against the Mexican state since it relies so heavily on that money as a part of its annual economy.
For instance, in 2015 Mexico received more income from remittances, overwhelmingly from the United States, than it did from its oil revenues. From my perspective, the heavy reliance on remittances has permitted Mexican politicians and business leaders to sidestep many of the institutional changes needed to better life for ordinary Mexicans so that they don't have to think about the trek north to achieve financial stability.
But a tax on remittances would go much farther than just Mexico, because the dollar flow outward is like a global sunburst, hitting virtually every nation that contributes to our yearly inflow of migrants: they arrive, begin employment legally or otherwise, and the funds begin pouring out.
Jobs are often referred to as a primary magnet for aliens seeking to enter the United States illegally. If this is so, then certainly the ready ability to send remittances by wire transfer without official tax or penalty multiplies the strength of that magnet many times over.
Logic would dictate that the United States do whatever is necessary to impede the outflow of remittance money. Keeping the money in our economy will help rebuild it a core premise of the Trump administration - and render jobs in the United States at least somewhat less attractive to "unauthorized workers"
[–] 17938488? 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Let’s remember what remittance payments are: Funds being sent out of our country by aliens, often illegal aliens who send a portion of the wages from their unauthorized employment back to their home countries, usually to support family.
Laudable as this may be from the context of personal and familial responsibility, Americans need to realize, first, that once the money has left our economy, it is gone forever; and second, that we're not talking about chump change, we're talking about tens of billions of dollars each year. The amount may actually be even more massive than the official numbers, because U.S. data collection on remittances has not been completely reliable.
In a one-step-removed sense, taxing remittances would in fact be a levy against the Mexican state since it relies so heavily on that money as a part of its annual economy.
For instance, in 2015 Mexico received more income from remittances, overwhelmingly from the United States, than it did from its oil revenues. From my perspective, the heavy reliance on remittances has permitted Mexican politicians and business leaders to sidestep many of the institutional changes needed to better life for ordinary Mexicans so that they don't have to think about the trek north to achieve financial stability.
But a tax on remittances would go much farther than just Mexico, because the dollar flow outward is like a global sunburst, hitting virtually every nation that contributes to our yearly inflow of migrants: they arrive, begin employment legally or otherwise, and the funds begin pouring out.
Jobs are often referred to as a primary magnet for aliens seeking to enter the United States illegally. If this is so, then certainly the ready ability to send remittances by wire transfer without official tax or penalty multiplies the strength of that magnet many times over.
Logic would dictate that the United States do whatever is necessary to impede the outflow of remittance money. Keeping the money in our economy will help rebuild it a core premise of the Trump administration - and render jobs in the United States at least somewhat less attractive to "unauthorized workers"