Immigrants Send $200 Billion Out Of The United States Every Year, Study Finds

Legal and illegal immigrants send approximately $200 billion out of the United States and back to their home countries every year, a new study on remittances finds.

The report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) found that the whopping sum of money was exported out of the American economy in 2021 and sent to 134 different foreign countries across the globe.

The organization points out that the amount of remittances —money sent out the America to foreign countries — has almost certainly increased in recent years alongside record levels of immigration into the United States and a ballooning percentage of the population that is foreign-born.

“Remittances effectively represent a transfer payment of hundreds of billions of dollars from American workplaces and communities to people abroad. To compound the problem, many migrants who send remittances out of the U.S. earn so little that they qualify for public benefits,” FAIR Executive Director Dale Wilcox explained. “The result is that American citizens subsidize social services and welfare benefits for aliens, legal and illegal, who send much of what they earn out of the country.”

The five countries receiving the most remittances from the United States are Mexico, India, Guatemala, the Philippines, and China, the organization notes.

From the Federation for American Immigration Reform

The scale of remittances from the United States is so high that they “account for around 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of multiple countries in Central America,” FAIR points out.

“Mexico benefits more than any other country from U.S. remittances. Mexican nationals living in the U.S. remit on average almost a fifth of their monthly incomes to Mexico,” the FAIR report explains. “Remittances to Mexico represent more than a quarter of the money sent out of the U.S.”

Conservative organizations and Republican politicians alike have advocated for a tax on remittances to recoup some of the money sent out of the American economy and throttle funding sent to criminal enterprises south of the border.

“Placing a fee on remittances is crucial because the more money that is smuggled back into Mexico, the stronger the cartels become,” FAIR Media Director Ira Mehlman told The Daily Wire. “Many illegal aliens are working off-the-books, and therefore, no payroll taxes have been collected. Taxing the money as it leaves the country would be a way to recoup some of that revenue loss.”

A remittance tax of 5 percent was introduced in the original version of the Big Beautiful Bill, but the figure shrank to a meager 1 percent tax.

The proposal sparked outrage from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. “If necessary, we’ll mobilize,” Sheinbaum threatened. “We don’t want taxes on remittances from our fellow countrymen. From the U.S. to Mexico.”

“America is not the world’s piggy bank. And we don’t take kindly to threats,” Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) fired back in response to Sheinbaum’s comments.

Sheinbaum later promoted one way in which Mexicans residing in the United States can avoid the one percent remittance tax, which takes effect in January of 2026.

The Senator from Missouri also introduced legislation, called the REMIT Act, which would implement a 15 percent tax on remittances. “Each year, the U.S. sees tens of billions of dollars leave our country as foreign nationals wire money back to their nations of origin, siphoning wealth and resources directly from our economy,” Schmitt said. “Remittances have also been a major driver of the mass migration crisis we have seen at our southern border.”