Catherwood LibraryILR School

Despite the low wages they are often paid, Mexican immigrants to the U.S. send $9.3 billion in monthly money orders to Mexico each year, providing the country with its third largest source of national income. It is estimated that the output of the 23 million Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. equals over seventy-five percent of the output of individuals living in Mexico, and remittances from immigrants living in the U.S. exceed government budgets throughout much of rural Mexico. In a move that has already benefited economies on both sides of the border, the Mexican government has begun providing identification cards to immigrants in recent months that many U.S. based banks have agreed to accept for the purposes of establishing accounts---resulting in an influx of $50 million to banks in California alone since the accounts were made available.