Migrants Buy Tons of Empty Homes in Mexico with US Cash, Only to Never Live in Them JP Carroll - The Daily Caller
go to original July 18, 2016

Nealtican, like other rural Mexican towns that migrants to the US hail from, has become a graveyard of forgotten houses. (Octavio Rivera Lopez)

Mexican immigrants living in the U.S have been building homes in Mexico for years, but the likelihood of them returning to their dream houses is slim at best.

The Mexican economy is heavily reliant on remittances from migrants living in the U.S. It is reported that migrants sent $25 billion worth of remittances back home in 2015, according to Univision. The payments that were formally tracked account for 2 percent of Mexico’s GDP, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

To give context to the importance of remittances, Mexican state oil company PEMEX only contributed $23.4 billion to the Mexican economy. Remittances from Mexicans living in the U.S. in 2015 surpassed the GDP of Afghanistan in 2015, which stands at $19.2 billion.

One of the central problems with the dependence on remittances is that the money sent home goes towards the daily financial needs of families, Univison reports. There is not a great deal of investment in the infrastructure of the rural Mexican towns that migrants hail from, due to the quick personal spending by family members.

See the original at The Daily Caller

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