Remittances outpace foreign aid and investment in much of the world, but transfer companies can skim a significant percentage.
Sending Money Overseas Needs to Cost Less
read more
Remittances
Trump’s Bad Ideas Aren’t Un-American After All
Many of the GOP front-runner’s worst proposals are playing out already.
Obama Corrects a Historic Mistake on Cuba
Supporters of normalizing relations with Cuba have lost many battles in Washington, but this is a clear victory.
Financial Crisis Hits Overseas Workers
When the clock strikes noon, mothers waiting for their children at Camp Crame Elementary School turn their necks and shift their feet, standing patiently in a courtyard shielded by a high tin roof from an extraordinarily bright sky. Within seconds, kids dart out of their classrooms and playfully crisscross the courtyard toward their mothers. These women not only live in the same Quezon City neighborhood — built around the Philippine National Police’s headquarters after which the school was named — but also share the common experience of having their husbands, siblings, or parents working abroad to support families left behind.
A Tale of Two Samoas
The two Samoas are divided by politics, economics, and a stretch of Pacific Ocean. Samoa, once known as Western Samoa, became the region’s first independent country when it separated from New Zealand in 1962. American Samoa, on the other hand, remains an unincorporated U.S. territory.
Remittances: For Love and Money
Yania Marcelino was a six-year-old girl in the Dominican Republic when her mother left their family to find work in another country. She went first to Puerto Rico, then later to New York City to work as a seamstress. There she began sending money back to Marcelino and her three siblings and four cousins. The children often had to travel 15 or 20 kilometers to get to the wire transfer agency, and sometimes the money sent was lost.