Making the decision to leave your home country can be painful. For many expats and migrants, the promise of new economic horizons and opportunities is quickly dampened by the guilt of leaving family behind.
Will the financial gain be worth the loss of precious time with your loved ones?
While these are innately human concerns, it’s important to realize that leaving home can be a primary way of protecting your family’s well being. Many recent studies have proven the economic power of migrants who have come to America to support their families.
Leaving home to support your family is a sacrifice that directly benefits your loved ones, even if it means you won’t see each other as often as you’d like. You know what your family needs, and you may have experienced the difficulty of providing resources while living in your home country.
For countless migrants across the world, leaving home has become the best way to help. By putting yourself in a position to send extra money home, you directly increase the quality of life for your family.
You’re Not Alone
While supporting your family may require you to leave them behind, it’s important that you know you’re not alone. Mass global migration is powered by the need and desire to protect families.
According to Jason DeParle, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the acclaimed book, “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves,” the numbers of migrants who left home to support their families has grown nearly 50% in the last twenty years:
“About 258 million migrants are scattered across the globe, and they support a population back home as big if not bigger. Were these half billion or so people to form their own country, it would rank as the world’s third largest.”
The amount of money sent to their families and friends back home has grown at increasingly significant rates. “Remittances — the sums migrants send home — are three times the world’s foreign aid budgets combined.”
It’s no wonder experts like DeParle increasingly see migration-driven remittances as “The world’s largest antipoverty program, a homegrown version of foreign aid. Mexico earns more from remittances than from oil. Sri Lanka earns more from remittances than from tea. About $477 billion a year now flows home to the developing world, an increase of more than sixfold in the twenty-first century.”
In 2017, Pew Research found that $148.5 billion in remittances were sent from the United States to other countries. Of that number, over 20 percent came from remittances sent from the United States to Mexico. According to The New Yorker, a tenth of the population in the Philippines works abroad and sends money home to support almost half of the country’s households. These workers (75 percent of whom were women) were hailed as “heroes of the country’s economy,” by former President Corazon Aquino.
Statistics like these may often seem impersonal, but in this instance, they embody the global and human desire to seek out economic opportunity and protect families at all costs.
These statistics represent a source of confidence for migrants hoping to find financial fortitude in America. Opportunities abound, and families across the world are benefiting from the bravery of their loved ones leaving home to provide.
In addition to the positive effects for your immediate family, sending money home is proven to help spur economic growth and the cultural health of your native country in multiple ways. According to the Migration Policy Institute, “remittances are associated with greater human development outcomes across a number of areas such as health, education, and gender equality.” This same study found that as families receiving money from abroad, their local communities become gradually enriched and transformed.
In short, the economic opportunity available to you will have a ripple effect through your family, community, and beyond. Your sacrifice will enrich the lives of many people and communities.
Supporting Your Family
At uLink, we make it our mission to help people support their families with the most affordable and reliable service available. We know how hard you work for your money, and we believe you should be able to send as much of it home as possible.
With uLink, you can send money to your loved ones with a great exchange rate and fees starting as low as $0. For a limited time, new customers can receive a $10 gift card to major retailers on their 1st, 2nd, and 5th transactions.
That’s a total of three gifts cards worth $30 after your first five transactions. Send money now!
