Funds immigrants send to Mexico up 24% from same time in ’20, bank says

DALLAS — Money sent to Mexico by U.S. immigrants is soaring, busting monthly records as that country and its economy continue to struggle with the coronavirus pandemic.

This year for the first seven months, through July, the flow hit $28 billion, up nearly 24% from the same period last year, according to Mexico’s Central Bank. In July, the flow of money known as remittances hit $4.54 billion.

The main driver is family ties during a time of need amidst the prolonged covid-19 pandemic, experts say.

“The ties of family are very deep for Mexicans, and those ties don’t seem to fade, even … after a decade or two,” said Andrew Selee, president of the nonprofit Mexican Migration Institute.

There are about 11 million foreign-born Mexicans in the U.S., and nearly 60% arrived more than 20 years ago, according to MPI. A large portion are here legally, Selee noted. About half of the Mexican foreign-born population is estimated to be in the U.S. lawfully.

The U.S. economy bounced back faster after the coronavirus slump, and that rippled through the more-established Mexican immigrant community of the U.S., Selee said. “Mexican immigrants in the U.S. have greater capacity to send money back home because they are working, and their families still aren’t,” he said.

“Mexican immigrants have remained remarkably consistent in sending remittances,” Selee said. But at some point,

Selee said, financial obligations will ebb for the established Mexican immigrant families.

The increased flow to Mexico and to other Latin American countries with high migration to the U.S. is “simply historic,” says Manuel Orozco, a remittance expert at Creative Associates International. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have all had remittance increases of 25% to 30% this year. A survey, called “A Commitment to Family” for the Inter-American Dialogue research center found optimistic expectations of generosity among 1,100 immigrants from eight countries. But that has been exceeded by the results, Orozco said.

Myrna Mendez of Dallas is symbolic of the many Mexico-born immigrants sending money back to relatives in Mexico. She attributes the remittance increase to the pandemic. “This pandemic is something we haven’t ever lived through,” Mendez said in Spanish. “They say tighten your belt and help.”

And so she does.

Thanks to technology, sending money to an ailing brother in northern Mexico is even easier. Sums can go as high as $500 when there are medical expenses for her family.

Her own family in Dallas lives from the wages of her husband, a construction worker with steady employment in the relatively healthy north Texas economy.

“We are blessed to bless others,” says Mendez, who has been in the U.S. for more than 25 years and is now a U.S. citizen.