Like 96% of money send to Mexico comes from the US, cash transfers to Mex make up like 4% of GDP
That is because WU is mainly used to send remittances abroad, of which US --> Mexico transfers are about 1/4 of the total volume.
Avoiding Western Union fees for international transfers to family is one of the few good uses of cryptocurrency.
I transfer from Brazil to Colombia pretty regularly and never pay any fee with WU.
When I was married I used to use WU to send money to my wife’s family in Xacatecas.
Lot of laborers here legally or otherwise who remit monies to family back across the border.
I know it was just funny that it defaulted that. I used to work at 711 decades ago and it was mostly people se ding money to family in mexico
When international migrants, primarily workers, send money to their family members in their home countries, these transfers are known as remittances.
The main recipient countries include India (12.6% of the total sent), Mexico (7.5%), China (6.4%), and the Philippines (4.8%). The largest source of remittances is the United States, with more than 25% of all transfers; Saudi Arabia is second with 6.6%.
Remittances from the U.S. to Mexico reached a record $55.9 billion in 2022. These transfers accounted for 95 percent of Mexico’s total remittances of $58.5 billion. Mexican migrants, who number 11 million in the U.S., typically send the funds home to support their families. The average monthly remittance to Mexico was $390 in 2022.
god, i never really thought much about it, but with the juice at 2% WU makes fuckin' bank off of migrant workers. i'm probably slow to the table on this (meaning i bet its happening), but a high value service an undocumented worker organization could provide as an inducement to join the union would be to provide money wiring services at a cost-plus fee in lieu of union dues. the workers would get a much lower rate, a "free" union, and in no time that union would have a war chest for legal services, health savings accounts, work stoppages, maybe even pensions and a probably large network of community credit unions happy to get their little taste.
before the darkweb you'd use western union/moneygram to buy drugs. they used to have insane deals for benzos from serbia, like 1k valium/xanax/klonopin for $250.
you can actually still get a k for only a little more than that (inflation adjusted), domestic.
it's funny, so much changes and yet so much stays the same.
That's for pressed pills, though, right? I was under the impression that basically 100% of street Xanax in the US is counterfeit, pressed RC benzos.
yeah, pressed. and bromazolam, thanks to the Chinese ban (and now bromazolam is going too), but at one point it was possible to get pressies that were basically the same as real Xanax, for that price.
I remember having to come up with a bizarre story about paying my brother-in-law in Kansas for a car because the clerk asked me why I kept coming in and wiring so much cash all the time...
It's probably registering your IP, and noting that you live within the region that used to be Mexico, where the majority of Mexicans in America live.
