Remittances are BIG Business

Fore an interesting Los Angeles Times (Apr. 16) story about the competition among buinesses to send money to immgirants’ native lands, click here.  It also tells another immigrant success story.

The story begins:

The king of King Express arrived at one of his 29 California outlets in a white Lexus, the essence of business cool: bold red tie, shoulder-length silver hair and glasses tinted a smoky gray. He came north from Guatemala as a teenager. Forty years later, Francisco “Pancho” Leon is among the top regional players in the business of sending immigrants’ money home. Messengers for his companies, Mexico Express and King Express, deliver more than $1 billion a year to rural Mexico and Central America, making the final leg of the journey by motorcycle, horseback and even the occasional canoe. Scraped together by factory hands, nannies, janitors, dishwashers and other low-wage workers, such transfers from the U.S. to Latin America add up to more than $40 billion a year.

KJ