Mexico's remittances pass $50 billion, surge during pandemic

COMACHUEN, Mexico (AP) — Mexico’s remittances — the money migrants send home to their relatives — have soared in the past two years, and are now expected to top $50 billion for the first time once 2021's figures are added up. That would surpass almost all other sources of Mexico's foreign income.

But as happy as the Mexican government is about the news — it calls the migrants “heroes” — the boom raises questions: Will Mexicans always have to emigrate? And is it sustainable, or just blip fueled in part by U.S. government pandemic support payments?

In many rural places such as Comachuen, Michoacan, every store, business and family depends on remittances.

“Without these remittances that migrants send back to their families here in Comachuen, the town would have no life,” said Porfirio Gabriel, who has spent nearly 13 years working on farms in the United States and now recruits and supervises people to go north.

Remittances as a percentage of Mexico’s GDP have almost doubled over the past decade, growing from 2% of GDP in 2010 to 3.8% in 2020, according to the government. Between 2010 and 2020, the percentage of households in Mexico receiving remittances grew from 3.6% to 5.1%.

For the first 11 months of 2021, remittances grew by almost 27%. Mexico is now the third largest receiver of remittances in the world, behind only India and China, and Mexico now accounts for about 6.1% of world remittances, according to a government report.

On one hand, the spike was simply a matter of need, caused in part by the coronavirus pandemic. Mexico’s GDP shrank 8.5% in 2020, and while the economy recouped about 4.7% of that loss in the first three quarters of 2021, growth appears to have slowed and inflation spiked in the last quarter.

“When a Mexican family suffers illness or their...