Remittances

A tidbit from this week's Economist:

As many as 190m migrant workers sent money home in 2007, according to the World Bank. Remittances that could be tracked reached $337 billion last year, of which $251 billion went to developing countries.

The income from remittances is far more than the total of foreign aid. I suspect that foreign workers will be among the first to be laid off as the global recession worsens. That is adding to the bad news for developing nations.