Remittances 3
Canadian company begins remittances
Canadian company begins sending remittances to Cuba
They received a formal written response from the U.S. Treasury Department, which considers their activity “within the scope of permitted transactions”.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: www.globenewswire.com
RevoluGROUP Canada Inc. announced that it has begun sending remittances to Cuba, although it has taken special precautions with respect to the United States and ” the complexities surrounding this specific market.”
According to the company’s website, in November 2021 they communicated with the U.S. Treasury Department explaining the uniqueness of their remittance mechanism and received a formal written response on December 1, 2021, that considers their activity “within the scope of permitted transactions.”
They further detail that the possibility of sending remittances to Cuba is already available through RevoluSEND and partners including coordinations from the RevoluGROUP USA Inc. subsidiary based in Miami, FL.
Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos F. de Cossio noted on his Twitter account, “So the U.S. banned remittances via Western Union to Cuba, which charged about $5 per 100 sent, to apparently authorize formulas that charge the sender up to $30 per 100.”
As part of the information to validate the Cuban market, RevoluGROUP Canada Inc. indicates that Cubans in the United States comprise nearly 2.7 million people who were born in Cuba or are descendants, according to U.S. Census Bureau tabulations.
Other significant populations of Cubans around the world are in Spain (141,400), Italy (37 300), Canada (19,000), Germany (13,400) and Mexico (12,900), according to mid-2019 United Nations Population Division estimates cited by the company.
They do not ignore, as part of their statement, that Western Union’s service – which previously handled about 30% of the market – was suspended in November 2020 and that, as a consequence of US policy towards the island, it is no longer possible to send remittances to Cuba with the main US providers.
What it does not say is that the official and safest ways for sending remittances from the United States by those who cannot travel frequently to Cuba to support their loved ones with money or do not wish to use third parties to help their relatives have been closed.
In the midst of the crisis aggravated by COVID-19 and the tightened blockade itself, the United States directly affected the Cuban family first, in 2019, when the U.S. administration set a quarterly limit on remittances of one thousand dollars per beneficiary; and then in 2020 when Western Union suspended operations to Cuba from 42 countries.
In June of that year, the U.S. added Fincimex to the State Department’s list of Restricted Cuban Entities; and finally, at the end of 2020, they suspended remittances from the U.S. to Cuba through institutional financial channels.
US maintains remittance restrictions
White House decides to maintain restrictions on remittances to Cuba
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
People wait to be served at a Western Union office on its last day of operations in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Nov. 23, 2020. Photo Credit: AP.
The U.S. government said Friday that the ban on sending remittances to Cuba will remain even longer, with which the White House hinders the right of families to help their loved ones living in the Caribbean nation.
A White House official told the media on Tuesday that the administration of President Joe Biden continues to study how to ensure that the money sent to the island does not favor the government of the largest of the Antilles, according to Reuters.
According to the source, the objective is to ensure that the benefits reach the Cuban people directly, although he did not mention how the U.S. economic blockade has been suffocating the inhabitants of the Caribbean country for six decades, even in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In July, Biden asked the Treasury and State Departments to suggest options for remittances to reach the beneficiaries, under the argument that the Caribbean nation’s executive appropriates between 20 and 40 percent of the remittances.
Last August, the manager of the Cuban commercial company Fincimex, Yamil Hernández, denied that the government of Havana or the armed forces obtained part of the amount sent from U.S. territory.
That theory repeated by politicians of the North American nation put an end to the relations of the Western Union company with the Cuban financial institutions in charge of processing remittances, specifically Fincimex, in October 2020.
The measure – imposed by former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) and maintained by the current administration – unilaterally ended the flow through regular and institutional channels, on the basis of totally unfounded pretexts, Hernandez asserted at the time.
The current U.S. president promised during his election campaign to change the hostile policy of his predecessor against Cuba, however, so far the 243 coercive measures imposed by Trump to reinforce the blockade remain unchanged.
(With information from PL)
The Mirage of Remittances
- English
- Español
THE MIRAGE OF REMITTANCES
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
When industrialized nations state that the remittances sent by immigrants from “developing countries” to relatives in their countries of origin represent “aid for development” they are masking a cruel form of exploitation of the South by the North.
The same is true when they attribute to migration the positive quality of being a decompressing factor of the social tensions in poor nations because remittances are a source of income of monetary resources that mitigate extreme situations.
It is true that the fresh money transfers emigrants make to their families help improve the balance of payments in their home countries, and sometimes represent a significant part of the gross product of these countries.
But in a longer term, the exodus of young workers and the dependence arising from cash transfers are in reality detrimental to the development of the countries that issue the migrants.
To put it more clearly: the economic crisis causes the exodus; the remittances of the migrants mitigate its immediate negative effects but –in the medium or long term– the crisis deepens because the conditions that caused it have not changed and the increasing exodus of the workforce aggravates it.
The family remittances of Latin American immigrants resident in the US represent for their countries of origin a higher income than their agricultural exports; they exceed their income from tourism; and in times of depressed oil prices exceed the value of the oil sales of some countries traditionally exporters of the hydrocarbon.
When the US government announces –or hints– its intention to deport undocumented immigrants, many Latin American governments are forced to request clemency because such a measure would lead to the emergence of insurmountable governance crises and the collapse of the economies of their home countries. They are not able to assimilate their deported nationals; neither can they do without their remittances.
A media suggestion that Washington is threatening to prohibit remittances of migrants from a specific country is enough to abruptly change predictions and polls and a presidential candidate with enough popularity to win an election by a wide margin, may suffer a setback and be forced to abandon the race.
When, a few years ago, it seemed that the candidate of left wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, Shafik Jorge Handal, would be elected President of El Salvador by a very large margin, the President of the United States threatened to
prohibit remittances from Salvadoran migrants established in the US if this happened. Reliance on remittances turned that country into a hostage of the empire; so much so that it was able to impose the candidate of the rightist Alianza Republicana
Nacionalista (ARENA).
Given the sustained growth of remittances and their high amount it would seem that the affluent North is beginning to compensate the South for the damages of its historical plunder. But this is far from being the case. For centuries, the global capitalist system has cruelly plundered the poor countries. It has stripped them of their natural resources, and subjected them to an unfair exchange of their goods. It has also ruthlessly exploited their workforce.
The fact that migrant remittances are increasingly becoming the base for sustaining the economies of a growing number of impoverished Third World countries should be seen as a crime against humanity, and not as a reason for complacency.
With the current terms of trade, if real aid for development is not increased; if the external debt –that is suffocating the economies of the underdeveloped countries in the world– is not cancelled; if the creation of mechanisms of false “integration” are insisted upon; if the practice of agricultural and trade protectionism –that rich countries impose acting inconsistently with their own neoliberal claims– is not abandoned, remittances will not mean anything good for the poor nations.
If mechanisms that stimulate the exports from developing countries are not created; if systems that force transnational companies to be subject to control measures –against labor exploitation, transfer of profits, speculation to avoid de-capitalization and brain drain of poor countries– are not implemented; if investments –that expand the labor market to contribute to the permanence of the population– are not promoted, then remittances will be nothing more than a palliative applied to an injustice that will become increasingly unbearable.
January 13, 2016.
EL ESPEJISMO DE LAS REMESAS
Por Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Cuando en las naciones industrializadas se afirma que las remesas de los inmigrantes de países “en vías de desarrollo” a sus familiares en sus países de origen constituyen “ayuda al desarrollo”, se enmascara una cruel forma de explotación del Sur por el Norte.
Lo mismo ocurre cuando se atribuye a la emigración la cualidad positiva de ser factor de descompresión de las tensiones sociales en las naciones pobres porque sus remesas son fuente de ingreso de recursos pecuniarios que atenúan situaciones extremas.
Es cierto que las transferencias de dinero fresco que hacen los emigrantes hacia sus familiares contribuyen a mejorar las balanzas de pagos en sus naciones de origen y a veces llegan a representar una parte significativa del producto bruto de éstas.
Pero, a más largo plazo, el éxodo de trabajadores jóvenes y la dependencia que surge de las transferencias de dinero, se traducen en perjudiciales para el desarrollo del país emisor de migrantes. Más claro: la crisis económica suscita el éxodo, las remesas de los emigrantes atenúan sus efectos nocivos inmediatos, pero, a mediano o largo plazo, la crisis se profundiza porque no han cambiado las condiciones que la provocaron sino que se han agravado precisamente a causa del éxodo de la fuerza de trabajo que sigue aumentando. Las remesas familiares de los inmigrantes latinoamericanos residentes en Estados Unidos aportan a sus países de origen más que sus exportaciones agrícolas, superan sus ingresos por concepto de turismo y en tiempos de depresión de los precios del petróleo sobrepasan el valor de las ventas petroleras de algunos países tradicionalmente exportadores del hidrocarburo.
Cuando el gobierno de Estados Unidos anuncia, o insinúa, su disposición de expulsar inmigrantes indocumentados, son muchos los gobiernos latinoamericanos que se han visto obligados a demandar clemencia porque tal medida provocaría el surgimiento de insalvables crisis de gobernabilidad y el desplome de las economías de sus países de origen, incapaces de asimilar a los expulsados, e impedidos de prescindir de sus remesas.
Basta que trascienda por la prensa una amenaza por parte de Washington de prohibir las remesas de los emigrados de un país específico para que cambien bruscamente las predicciones de las encuestas y un candidato a Presidente con popularidad suficiente para ganar una elección por amplio margen, sufra un descalabro y deba abandonar la carrera.
Cuando hace algunos años parecía que el candidato del izquierdista Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, Schafik Jorge Handal, habría de ser electo Presidente de El Salvador por un margen muy amplio, el Presidente de Estados Unidos formuló la amenaza de prohibir las remesas de los migrantes salvadoreños establecidos en Estados Unidos si ello ocurría. La dependencia en las remesas convirtió a ese país en rehén del imperio, que de tal manera fue capaz de imponer al candidato de la derechista Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA).
Por el sostenido ritmo de crecimiento de las remesas y su monto tan elevado, parecería que se está logrando que el Norte opulento empiece a compensar al Sur por los daños de la histórica expoliación. Pero ni remotamente es esto así. Durante siglos, el sistema capitalista global ha saqueado a los países pobres de manera cruel. Les ha despojado de sus recursos naturales, y sometido a un intercambio injusto de sus mercancías, además de la explotación inmisericorde de su fuerza de trabajo.
El hecho de que las remesas de los emigrantes lleguen a ser base de sustentación de las economías de un número cada vez mayor de países depauperados del Tercer Mundo, debe ser visto como la denuncia de un crimen contra la humanidad y no como un motivo de complacencia.
Con los actuales términos del intercambio, si no se incrementa la ayuda verdadera al desarrollo; si no se conmuta la deuda externa que ahoga las economías de los países subdesarrollados del mundo; si se insiste en forzar la creación de mecanismos de falsa “integración”; si no se renuncia a la práctica del proteccionismo agrícola y comercial que los países ricos imponen en acto de inconsecuencia con sus propios reclamos neoliberales, las remesas nada bueno significan para las naciones pobres.
Si no se crean mecanismos de estímulo a las exportaciones de los países subdesarrollados; si no se apoyan sistemas que obliguen a que las empresas transnacionales se sometan a medidas de control contra la explotación laboral, el traslado de beneficios y la especulación para evitar la descapitalización y la fuga de cerebros de los países pobres que ellas generan; si no se promueven inversiones que expandan el mercado laboral para contribuir al arraigo de la población, las remesas no serán más que un paliativo aplicado a una injusticia que se hará cada vez más insoportable.
Enero 13 de 2016.
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