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Comment by bluefirebrand | Hacker News Reader

> What do they do with that money? They spend it, which grows the economy. Our economy, not some other country's economy.

I'm going to guess you've never spoken to anyone who is sending money back to their family in their original country with every paycheck.

Not really the point of this conversation I guess but... yeah. It does happen more than you probably think. To the point where malls in my area have kiosks for wiring money to other countries for cheap.

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Wouldn’t they be sending left-over money ie, money after spending locally, back to their home country?

I can’t imagine a lot of people out there who send all their money back home without spending some of it locally for self sustenance.

> I'm going to guess you've never spoken to anyone who is sending money back to their family in their original country with every paycheck.

If that sent money ever comes back to the domestic economy, then you are back to the previous situation.

If it doesn't come back, that's even better: because then your central bank can print more money to make up for the disappearance. Essentially, you got the foreigner to perform services in return for some ink and paper.

That's not true, most of the money is spent here and very little to take care of the family that's been left back home. Otherwise how can they survive here, think about immigrant kids education, housing, healthcare, retirement.

I agree this happens a lot, but isn't this an area of financial life that is regulated, governed, and monitored by states today? I am not familiar with the policies or regulations in play here but this seems very addressable by the institutions and regulatory bodies that exist today in most (all?) countries. A solved problem, in other words.

For example the income tax or other taxes already capture a portion of foreign workers' incomes that the state wants to capture without discouraging workers too much and working elsewhere, according to their economic models and policies.

I suppose different countries have different strategies on this, rich countries are trying to benefit from foreign labor and capture some taxes from them while less rich countries are trying to increase their haul by encouraging their citizens to become foreign workers (example: Philippines).

Right and workers are the ones who build the country. The more workers there are the bigger the gross domestic product. Now if some money enriches people in other countries that means they will buy more Coca-Cola! This planet is not a zero-sum game. When people help each other that helps everybody. The exception is of course countries which start wars.

I mean if USA had never allowed immigrants to come here where would we be economically?

Your logic: let's reduce immigration because immigrants send remittances to family members who are not permitted by our immigration laws to join their family members in this country, which would increase immigration numbers further while reducing capital offshoring.

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