RemittancesGateway.org

In this small eastern Salvadoran town, new luxury homes tower over the one-story brick, cement and wooden structures that once predominated. On one block, a three-story mansion with a hot tub sits next door to a humble brick home with an outhouse.

Many of the homes were built with money sent by former townspeople who immigrated to the United States, people who settled mostly in Montgomery and Prince George's counties, Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia.

Source: Poder 360

Banco Central reported that remittances from Ecuadoran migrants sent back to the country shrank 11.6% in 2009

According to a report by Banco Central, remittances Ecuadorans send their families in the country totalled $2,495 million in 2009, compared with $2,822 million in 2008, representing an 11.6% decrease. The central bank specified that "it's the first time that remittances shrank in relation to a previous year since we've begun analyzing their flow in 2000. Up till 2009, the average annual growth was 17%, although it began slowing in 2006, dropping considerably beginning in 2008 when the world economic crisis affected the employment levels and the incomes of migrants in countries such as the U.S., Spain and Japan."