It found that immigrants who have continued to send money home are sending larger sums and with greater frequency, as longtime U.S. residents contribute more and as the cost to transmit money falls. Thus, the total value of remittances to Latin America could still reach last year's $45.9 billion, the bank said. [...]
    The U.S. economic decline, particularly the construction slump, has contributed to a rise in unemployment among Hispanics, to 7.1% in the first quarter of 2008 from 5.2% in 2006. Construction employs one in five Latin American immigrants, Mr. Terry said.
    The U.S. is home to 18.8 million Latin American adults, of whom nearly half are illegal immigrants, the survey said. The immigrants send home, on average, $325 per remittance about 15 times in a year.

Here's the New York Times reporting on the story: Fewer Immigrants Send Money Home

•   •   •  

Demography Is King    [4/30/08]
David Brooks does some interesting analysis about how America has fractured in the last several decades, even without mentioning immigration. Imagine how much more the addition of tens of millions of foreigners over the same time has affected society.

Fifty-five years ago, 80 percent of American television viewers, young and old, tuned in to see Milton Berle on Tuesday nights. Tens of millions, rich and poor, worked together at Elks Lodges and Rotary Clubs. Millions more, rural and urban, read general-interest magazines like Look and Life. In those days, the owner of the local bank lived in the same town as the grocery clerk, and their boys might play on the same basketball team. Only 7 percent of adult Americans had a college degree.
    But that’s all changed. In the decades since, some social divides, mostly involving ethnicity, have narrowed. But others, mostly involving education, have widened. Today there is a mass educated class. The college educated and non-college educated are likely to live in different towns. They have radically different divorce rates and starkly different ways of raising their children. The non-college educated not only earn less, they smoke more, grow more obese and die sooner.
    Retailers, home builders and TV executives identify and reinforce these lifestyle clusters. There are more niche offerings and fewer common experiences. [...]
    Over the years, different theories have emerged to describe the educated/less-educated divide. Conservatives have gravitated toward the culture war narrative, dividing the country between the wholesome masses and the decadent cultural elites. Some liberals believe income inequality drives everything. They wait for an uprising of economic populism. Other liberals divide the country morally, between the enlightened urbanites and the racist rednecks who will never vote for a black man.
    None of these theories really fit the facts. It’s more accurate to say that the country has simply drifted apart into different subcultures. There’s no great hostility between the cultures. Americans have a fuzzy sense of where the boundaries lie. But people in different niches have developed different unconscious maps of reality. They have developed different communal understandings of what constitutes a good leader, of what sort of world they live in. They have developed different communal definitions, which they can’t even articulate, of what they mean by liberty, security and virtue. Demographic groups have begun to function like tribes or cultures.