A tax too far: Don’t punish immigrants sending money to family 

Every week in Bridgeport, I sit with immigrant families as they divide their limited weekly earnings in two different directions. Part will pay the rent here in Connecticut. The remaining amount will be transferred back to a family member overseas.  

I started a bilingual financial literacy program for these families, but many of the questions they ask me are not related to my services. Instead, they want to know how to safely transfer money to relatives living in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, or Mexico.

Economists call this kind of transfer a “remittance.” Together, millions of these transfers create a massive flow of capital out of wealthy nations and into lower- and middle-income countries. 

According to the World Bank, migrant workers transferred more than $685 billion into low- and middle-income countries in 2024, a total that surpassed both foreign direct investment and international development assistance. The Inter-American Development Bank reports that Latin America and the Caribbean received approximately $161 billion in remittances during 2024, and the World Bank puts Mexico’s share at about $68 billion, making it the second largest recipient in the world.

Numbers this large become foreign policy issues. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute found that in 2023, remittances to developing countries reached approximately $656 billion, nearly three times greater than global foreign assistance, which totaled roughly $224 billion. Unlike foreign assistance, which can take months or years to arrive,........

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