Remittances that help family and friends to survive, sadly, usually, help keep in power those who forced migrants to leave their homelands.

Sir, Gideon Long (and Vanessa Silva) report “Migration has also helped Mr Maduro to stay in power. The UN estimates that 2.3m people — 7 per cent of the population — have left Venezuela since 2015. Many are prominent opponents of the regime and while their voices are still heard from exile, they are no longer in Caracas orchestrating protests.” “Venezuelans display resilience in face of hyperinflation” August 25.

But how many millions Venezuelans are kept alive by the remittances from their emigrant family members or friends? Several millions? So that clearly helps the Maduro government to hold on to power much more than the absence of some prominent (but also until now quite ineffective) opponents.

Fifteen years ago I served as an Executive Director in the World Bank. My Chair also represented nations from Central America like El Salvador and Honduras, which had millions of migrants working abroad, primarily in the United States, and from where with great sacrifices, they constantly sent their families vital monetary assistance.

As much as I admired these emigrants, I abhorred knowing that their remittances were also helping to keep in power those who were basically responsible for them having to emigrate.

For instance if we assume that migrant workers remit 20% of what they earn, then according to remittance data supplied by the World Bank, in 2008 and with respect to Honduras, we could calculate Honduran migrants gross earnings abroad, representing 122% of Honduras GDP. And so, in economic terms, where is really Honduras?

Time and time again I push for the idea that, as a minimum minimorum thank you for providing their homelands with these lifelines, the migrants should at least have an important representation in their respective general assemblies. That way they could at least try to change the realities so as to be able to go back to their homelands, before they forgot these. “No remittances without representation”.

We often hear about the dangers that brain-drain could represent for these countries. I always thought heart-drain to be much worse menace.

@PerKurowski

Migration is about freedom of movement of people. But what about freedom of movement of bank credit?

Sir I refer to Tim Harford’s “The real benefits of migration” October 24.

For me it is hard to understand how someone who takes such a positive view on migration as Harford therein expresses, at the same time is seemingly ok with regulations that interfere with the free allocation of bank credit.

Not long ago I went to visit the Statue of Liberty for the first time. While standing there I thought about what would have become of these migrants if, on top of how bankers are adverse to risk, regulators also had instructed the banks, by means of lower capital requirement incentives, to stay away from the “risky” migrants?

I ask: “In a world where we rightly abhor racial and sexual discrimination” why should we agree with regulators discriminating against the bank borrowing needs and wishes of the risky? And such discrimination occurs even when for instance in the US there exists an Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Tim Harford argues the “supposed costs or benefits [analysis] always omit one crucial group. That group is the migrants themselves”. But, in the case of bank regulations, there is also an omitted group, namely all those SMEs and entrepreneurs who have been denied bank credit, precisely because regulators disliked “the risky”.

PS. Tim Harford refers to concerns about “brain drain”. I, having been an Executive Director of the World Bank for many nations depending on remittances by their migrants, have always been more concerned with the possibility of a “heart-drain”.

@PerKurowski ©

In immigration policy the perfect is also the enemy of the good

Sir, you write about “the mess over US immigration policy” May 9, and, as usually happens, most of the mess is created by those who want to court their followers by showing off that they want it all and perfect for them, when perfect, as always, is the enemy of the good.

Instead of what you imply I say for instance that if the price for getting some order back into immigration policies, before dirt hits the fan, is to have the migrants pay some punitive fees for their permits, so be it, that is still much better than having them paying the much more expensive punitive costs of not having permits. Let them put the price on the table and, after we haggle a bit, we will find the ways and means to help the migrants pay those fees.

That they must go home for extended intervals? Well we could argue about the length and the timings of such home-goings but it is not really a preposterous thing to ask of temporary work programs to include clauses that could keep their hearts warm to their homelands and lessening the risks of that heart-drain that could make their return much more difficult.

Sir, we sincerely appreciate your good intentions but please, don’t embrace us too much, and help us instead to get as many workable pieces of a solution formalized as fast as possible, before the problems get out of hand. Already having 12 million flesh and blood earthlings called illegal aliens is no minor problem.

Help the migrants to earn more and not to forget their mothers

Sir, the Inter-American Development Bank informed that the remittances sent home to the Latin American countries by their migrant workers in 2006 were $63bn and so, if we assume that this represents 15% of their gross earnings, we obtain that the gross migrant product (GMP) for Latin America should be around $420bn. The developing banks need to stop focusing so much on what in the corporate world would only be similar to the cash dividends paid out to the foreign investors. Since every dollar sent home by the son who works abroad has in fact the same economic (and spiritual) value than the dollar the mother receives from the son who stayed home, what they should be doing is helping both sons to earn more, instead of wasting so much time and resources on petty issues such as the transfer costs, and which are anyhow only reduced by real sustainable competition between those interested in that market. If there is one aspect though that is of utmost importance and that relates directly to the remittances, but that is basically ignored in all the projections of future remittances, that is the heart-drain that could cause someone working abroad to forget his home… and find a stepmother.