Proposed Factors

Specifically, I offer a plan to establish an effective system of remittance regulation calibrated on a local level according to three separate factors: the unemployment rate among high school dropouts (for similarly educated immigrants); diversity criterion, with non-white (white) immigrants encouraged to work in white-majority (minority-majority) areas; and local capacity utilization (to be defined later in this article). Potential standards for regions are counties, commuting zones, labor market areas (Tolbert & Sizer 1990 pg. 1-3), or another variant such as mobility zones (Foote et al. pg. 16-23). The idea behind these measures is to create separate and distinct mini-metro areas across the United States in order to sort and categorize local economies more systematically. To consider locally- tuned remittance regulation as through the proposed postal remittance system is then akin to asking what the effects of immigration are to net receiving countries like the United States. Its separate factors then are presented as distinct ways immigration impacts local communities, and further proposes that remittances are important enough to immigrant’s destination decision as to merit consideration. A federally-formulated policy according to such local considerations would yield a more exact and distinctive effect.

Depending upon the status of each of these factors, each region would have a remittance cap placed upon resident immigrants. Nationwide there would be a baseline remittance cap, as well as a maximum remittance cap and a minimum remittance cap (covered later in this article). Such a remittance cap would be a proportion of the migrant’s total income. Each factor will either raise or lower the remittance cap by region. For example, a place facing low rental occupancy may have a higher remittance cap in order to encourage immigrants to move there, even moreso if low-skilled unemployment was relatively low, or if they helped to diversify the local neighborhoods and workplaces.