Remesas

De los 30.000 dekassegui (japonés: partir para ganar dinero) que regresan a Brasil cada año, un 75% de ellos se lanza activamente a la apertura de nuevos negocios o a la ampliación de pequeñas empresas existentes. La creación del Fondo Dekassegui tiene como fin promover actividades empresariales entre los emigrantes brasileños en Japón –que enviaron 2.200 millones de dólares en 2005- para facilitarles la apertura de negocios a su regreso a Brasil.

Un reportaje del noticiero de Parana sobre el programa (en portugues): 

Descrição: Paraná TV 2ª Edição -  O difícil caminho de volta dos brasileiros que foram trabalhar no Japão
http://tvparanaense.rpc.com.br/index.phtml?Video_ID=26584&seq=&autostart=1

Sending money back home? Just press "talk."

That's what Western Union, Radio Shack and the small wireless carrier Trumpet Mobile hope millions of Hispanic immigrants will do with a new service announced yesterday.

Though financial turmoil has put credit card, mortgage and auto markets at a standstill, the flow of money immigrants send overseas continues to increase.

In 2007, $65.5 billion in remittances were sent to Latin American and Caribbean nations, up 7 percent from the previous year, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

That, combined with the fast-growing sales of cellphones among immigrants in the United States and developing countries, has caught the attention of Western Union, which offers wire transfer services and in 1861 set up the first transcontinental telegraph line in North America.

For decades, millions of Latin American and Caribbean men have moved to the United States and other rich countries, found jobs and sent billions of dollars back home. These remittances, totaling more than $312 billion since the beginning of the century, helped support the economies of Brazil and Mexico, and have proved to be a key economic foundation of smaller nations like Ecuador, Guatemala and Haiti.

But the warning lights of a downturn are starting to flash. Latin American and Caribbean migrants sent a record $66.5 billion to their native countries last year, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). But for the first time since the bank began monitoring these transactions in 2000, growth in remittance flows failed to reach the double-digit percentage gains they had made in previous years, dropping from 14 percent in 2006 to just 7 percent last year. ... "We still don't know for certain whether this is a short-term change or the beginning of a new direction," says Donald Terry of the IDB's Multilateral Investment Fund. "But if it were to become a trend, it would push millions into poverty."

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Source: Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post

The Bush administration yesterday renewed its drive to crack down on U.S. companies that hire illegal immigrants by slightly altering an earlier initiative stalled by a federal judge since last September.

If the new proposal satisfies the court, the government could begin warning 140,000 employers in writing as early as June about suspect Social Security numbers used by their employees and force businesses to resolve questions about their identities or fire them within 90 days.

The result could intensify an economic and political debate over the administration's immigration policies in the months leading up to November's elections for president and Congress.