Returning Home: Deportations & Return Migration
While the number of people leaving Central America is well documented, less is known on how many return home, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
This blog refers to Manuel Orozco’s notes prepared for discussion at the IMTC, Nov. 17, 2021.
Despite a severe continued deterioration of health conditions among Latin American and Caribbean countries, and a slower than expected economic recovery in 2021, migrant remittance transfers will grow 25% relative to 2020, which had already increased 9%. Some countries demonstrated a substantive increase, of up to 30%. Most of that change is associated to trends in the US economy.
This upward move comes at a time when Latin American and Caribbean countries are still struggling to recover. In turn, these family remittances are responding positively to macroeconomic growth and having an impact in their contribution to national income. Remittances in 2021 will be more than 5% of the entire region’s GDP, and over 20% for many of the smaller countries already affected by the pandemic and recovery.
Following patterns in remittance growth points to several important indicators that show that growth is not driven by one specific indicator but by a mix of factors, including sending from the United States, remittance behavior within the marketplace. Specifically,
Combined, the increase in the number of senders at least by 7%, plus the increase in the principal sent by another 7%, plus the increase in intraregional flows explain a significant 20% growth.
Remittances will likely exhibit continued but modest growth relative to 2021 because some factors explaining the increase are associated to one-time developments (sustained savings, people staying longer but nearly exhausting the pool of all migrant adults). Looking at Central American remitters, more migrants will send money (of those already in the United States), but the share of remittance senders will not increase quite substantially because it is reaching 90%, yielding 300,000 more transactions.
New migrants entering the country will contribute to the increase, as they will equal 2% of all migrants, amounting to 100,000, at least half of them who send money. However, the principal amount increased may remain low because they will send as per home country needs.
Although US demand for labor will remain stable, and unemployment will drop to 4% (among migrants will drop to 5% from 6% in 2021), it is important to consider certain potential risks, specifically:
While the number of people leaving Central America is well documented, less is known on how many return home, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
The Pope’s five-day trip across Mexico is on a route deliberately made to draw attention to the dangerous journey taken by migrants to the US.
Faced with limited economic prospects, many Hondurans opt to migrate by any means possible.