The remittance mystery

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades, the U.S. has been the single biggest source of remittances worldwide. A remittance is a transfer of money, typically from an immigrant to their family in their country of origin. But we are in the middle of a big, loud and very public immigration crackdown on those who are here without legal status. And that crackdown is disrupting the global remittance market.

People who have come to the U.S. from a handful of countries — especially some Central American countries — have been sending more money back to their countries of origin. And it’s a bit of a puzzle because … you might think the opposite would be the case.

As immigration plummets, we try to figure out why remittances are surging in some countries, and not others. And we learn why a surge in money sent home inspires joy — but also fear.

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This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and Greg Rosalsky. It was produced by Luis Gallo with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Marianne McCune with fact-checking help from Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Patrick Murray. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:07.0	About a year ago, Larissa Vargas was sitting at her desk at the headquarters of the largest bank in Honduras.
0:13.6	She was watching this flow of money come in from overseas, and it was picking up.
0:18.2	It was gradual. It was gradual. Then over the next weeks, then months, that flow of money from overseas into Honduras continued to intensify.
0:27.9	She was like, what is going on here?
0:30.6	She was surprised.
0:32.6	I mean, this keeps going.
0:34.3	Larissa works at Banco Ficoza.
0:36.6	She is the remittance manager. She's been working
0:39.2	in that department for 20 years. She handles the more than a billion dollars that come into
0:44.1	bank accounts from other countries, mostly the U.S., through all kinds of channels, like Western
0:49.7	Union and MoneyGram. In her years at the bank, she's seen some changes. Like, as more Hondurans have
0:56.6	moved to the United States, reminces have grown a lot. As technology has gotten better,
1:01.9	it's gotten easier to send money across borders and to track it. What has been happening this year?
1:08.0	Well, this year, actually, it's been quite the year. We have had a growth of 26% increase,
1:17.9	which is not typical. So that's a lot, Erica. I mean,
1:22.5	26% growth in remittances since last year. It's definitely been a rowdy year.
1:30.3	Remittances, in case you're not familiar, are the money people who have migrated to another
1:34.7	country send back to their countries of origin.
1:37.8	They work, send some of what they earn back to support their families, or maybe to build a
1:41.7	house or open a business back in their hometowns.
1:45.2	Migrants abroad tend to send remittances on a regular basis, like every couple weeks or every
	...

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