Spanish
Miami.- The proposal of a remittance tax of 5% sent from the United States, which the House of Representatives is now debating, distresses migrants whose families depend on this money, with more than 40 million people who would be affected in US territory.
The levy, tied to the controversial federal budget that the House of Representatives is discussing this Wednesday with an uncertain future, worries immigrants like Honduran María Lorenza Carrasco, who has been in Florida for 33 years, from where she sends about 1,300 dollars monthly to her two daughters and her brother with cancer.
"It's help that I give to my daughters and they survive on that, my brother, who has cancer. They are going to perform an operation on my brother right now, they have performed three operations on him in Honduras and the cancer came back again," the Central American stated to EFE.
The levy would affect more than 40 million people, both undocumented and residents with 'green cards', and other non-immigrant visas, according to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC).
"Of course, (I am) very worried. That can't be, that can't be that. Imagine, I don't earn much in this country, I sacrifice myself to send them the money," recounted the Honduran woman protected by Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
A 5% with a high cost
The initiative, part of the controversial budgetary and fiscal plan promoted by the American president, Donald Trump, and which the House of Representatives is debating this week, would apply a 5% tax on remittances transferred from the U.S. abroad.
This would impact countries like Mexico, the second-largest recipient of remittances in the world, and Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, where these incomes represent about a quarter of their gross domestic product (GDP), according to the World Bank.
Although the rate is 5%, this would be added to other taxes already applied, so the cost of sending 350 US dollars to Mexico would increase from 6 to 23.5 dollars, according to an investigation by BBVA Mexico.
Based on this data, migrants are asking their governments to act against the tax, such as the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who denounced that the tax violates a treaty in force since 1994 to avoid double taxation between the U.S. and Mexico, which received a record of almost 65 billion dollars in remittances in 2024.
Juan Flores, president of the 15 de Septiembre Foundation in Miami, asked the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, to react, citing data from the Central Bank showing that these remittances are 27% of Honduran GDP.
"This year we are going to surpass 10 billion (dollars sent) despite all this uncertainty and this immigration crisis happening within the U.S. But, even so, we do not have that reciprocity, that support that we deserve and that we are crying out for," he stated in an interview with EFE.
A blow against migrants
As the country with the most immigrants, the United States is also the world's main source of remittances, concentrating a quarter of the total sent, with an estimated more than 200 billion dollars, according to World Bank data updated at the end of 2022.
In this context, migrants like Honduran Dalila Galvez interpret the tax as a blow to their work and other countries, as the 300 dollars she sends each month to her family represent "a lot, too much because they buy food, pay for electricity and pay when they get sick".
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"We (the migrants) are those who work in the sun, ... we are not lazy, we are not thieves, we only come to try to earn a little more to go up, to be able to (help) back in our country," he said in an interview.
But the voices of these immigrants are far from being heard, Trump has put all his effort into getting the bill that includes the tax on remittances approved before July. EFE.
