LATIN AMERICA: More unemployment, less remittances in 2009 - ECLAC

December 28, 2008 | By knews | Filed Under News

The weight of the economic crisis will be felt most by the lowest income households in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2009, and this will be reflected in a drop in remittances and a rise in unemployment.

This is according to the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America and The Caribbean (ECLAC).

According to the ECLAC report on the economies of the region, the international crisis will broaden the gap between rich and poor.

Under the current circumstances, with regional growth dropping from an average 4.6 percent in 2008 to 1.9 percent in 2009, and an unemployment rate expected to rise from 7.5 percent to about 8.1 percent next year, low-income households are expected to bear the additional brunt of falling remittances and domestic prices. Read more

Remittances' benefits come at a price

COVER STORY
MEXICO

MORELIA, Mexico -- For recent law school graduate Gabriel Medina, dollars from his sister in South Florida have been his lifeline to a better future.

Each month, Elisa Medina sends her brother an average of $300, part of her earnings from a Homestead plant nursery job where the native of the Mexican state of Michoacán has worked since moving to South Florida in 2001 with her three children.

For Gabriel, the remittances Elisa sends him -- ''more than I earn in my job'' -- and the money he saved during a year spent working in South Florida allowed him to finish law school. [Read more]

Latin American Migrant Community Summit

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About the Summit

The Americas is a hemisphere of migrants. Virtually all countries in the Americas experience some form of migration. As migration has increased dramatically in the past two decades, so have migrant organizations begun to form in many countries. These organizations take many forms, but they share a concern with building healthy communities, both in their adopted countries, and in their places of origin.

Over the past 18 months, a group of migrant leaders from organizations whose members emigrated from the Americas have been meeting to develop a space for information-sharing and joint strategy setting for Latino and Caribbean migrant leaders. The goal of this initiative is to position organized groups of Latin American immigrants as protagonists in the development of healthy communities, both in destination countries and in countries of origin.

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