Opinion Blog : Entries Tagged With 'Immigration'
| April 30, 2007 08:37 AM |
Live from CoF: Immigration and PhilanthropyYesterday at the Council on Foundations annual conference in Seattle, a session entitled “The Color of Democracy” ended with two very different stories. Georgia Representative Anthony Sellier told his own history—how he migrated from Venezuela, sought an education, became a successful businessman, and now sits in the state legislature. He has lived the American dream. On the other hand, Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, asked us to imagine the future of the children of undocumented immigrants. Historically, America has meant a better life, not always for migrants themselves, but at least for their offspring. Today, however, the second generation is accumulating disadvantage, and that, Suro said, is a “prescription for disaster.” In 2006, as the immigration debate boiled, local governments attempted to bar or limit migrants’ access to housing, jobs, and healthcare, and empowered police to enforce immigration laws as part of their normal routine. Over the last year, as a result of Operation Return to Sender, 23,000 people have been detained, separating mothers from children and husbands from wives. The effect is dehumanizing. Earlier in the session Sellier had told another story, about his friend Carlos, a Mexican immigrant from Sellier’s district in middle Georgia. Sellier’s church worked with Carlos through the long, difficult, and expensive process of applying for documentation. Now Carlos is the chief of a construction crew, and he recently called Sellier to complain about a competitor—a crew chief who hires only undocumented workers and pays lower wages. Sellier acknowledged that Carlos, who has gone the extra mile, shouldn’t have to compete with that chief for business. But what about the crew of undocumented workers? If we take away their jobs, how will they survive? What can we do to help them? Is one partial answer more vigorous prosecution of employers who don’t pay minimum wage, thereby helping the workers while evening the playing field for people like Carlos? As Suro said in his opening remarks, immigration holds a mirror to the host country. How we answer these questions will tell us much about ourselves. Please share your thoughts below.
Catherine DiBenedetto is the assistant editor of Stanford Social Innovation Review. Posted by SSIR Editor
0 Comment(s) -
 View/Post Comments
|
|---|---|
| April 30, 2007 02:01 PM |
Live from CoF: Remittances—The New Way to Alleviate PovertyPeople concerned about alleviating poverty in less developed nations focus most of their efforts on well-known programs like foreign aid, microfinance, foreign direct investment, and the like. But there is another source of money flowing from the developed world to the less developed world that dwarfs these traditional forms of aid and is arguably more effective, but is not well known or understood. That source of money is remittance—money earned by immigrant workers living in developed nations, like the U.S. or Germany, who send it back home to family members in developing nations, like El Salvador or Azerbaijan, to pay for food, housing, education, new businesses, savings, and other purposes. In 2006, an estimated $60 billion was sent to Latin American nations by maids, car washers, carpenters, cooks, and other immigrant workers. About $45 billion of that money came from the U.S., another $10 billion from Europe, between $3 and $4 billion from Japan, and the rest from Canada, Australia, and other countries. To put that number in perspective, the total amount of foreign direct investment (e.g. GM building an auto plant) in Latin America in 2006 was $45 billion, and the total amount of official development assistance (e.g. USAID money) was $6 billion. About 57 percent of the remittance sent to Latin America is used for basic needs—things like food and rent. The other 43 percent of the money, close to $20 billion, goes for the following: 29 percent for education; 25 percent to start a business; 22 percent for savings; 11 percent to buy or build a home; 5 percent to buy health or life insurance; and 8 percent other. And it’s not just a Latin American phenomenon. About 21 percent of the population of Moldova, for example, receives remittances on a regular basis. About 200 million immigrants around the world send remittances back home. Those remittances are distributed to an estimated 600 million family members. Altogether, about 800 million people send or receive remittance money, or about one out of every 10 people living on the planet. That’s a huge number, far larger than are directly impacted by microfinance, which gets far more hoopla and attention from the philanthropic and nonprofit communities. The key difference between remittances and other forms of aid is that remittances are controlled directly by the people affected by poverty. The money doesn’t flow through a government agency, or a foundation, or an NGO. It goes directly from those who earn it to the people who need it and know best how to spend it. The only overhead is the transaction costs imposed by the money changers, such as Western Union. Because of this, remittance is certainly the most grassroots poverty reduction program there is, and arguably the most cost effective as well. (Note: Thanks to Sergio Bendixen, president of Bendixen and Associates, and Donald Terry, manager of Multilateral Investment Fund, Inter-American Development Bank, for these statistics. Both spoke on a panel yesterday at the Council on Foundations annual conference in Seattle. The panel was called, appropriately enough, “Bottoms Up Philanthropy: How Remittances Transform Communities and Families.")
Eric Nee is the managing editor of Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Posted by SSIR Editor
0 Comment(s) -
View/Post Comments
|
