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National Survey on International Emigration of
Guatemalans 2002-2003
Victor Lozano
Present statistics indicate that one out of every 35 persons in the world is an international migrant. It is estimated that the total number of migrants amounts to more than 175 million people (that is 2.9 percent of the world population). Around 48 percent of all international migrants are women, during the past 35 years; the number of international migrants has more than doubled. In Latin America, the country with the largest number of immigrants is the United States (35 million). Official figures of the population census of 2000 in the United States report 1,686,937 Central American migrants (with the exception of Mexico). It is clear that these figures account for only part of the migration phenomenon, since this tally does not include irregular immigrants.
Another dimension of international migration of Central Americans, mainly towards the United States, is the issue of money remittances, better known as family remittances (part of the income that international migrant workers send to their families in their home country). Official figures of the Inter-American Development Bank -IDB- report the amount of 5.5 thousand million dollars for the year 2000 in family remittances (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica), which is around 10% of the NGP of the mentioned countries, except for Costa Rica that only reports 134 million dollars in remittances received.
The money transfers from Central American emigrants to their home country form a close link between migration and development. Despite these remittances being an important source of currency, factors such as the diversity of the transfers, the transmitting channels (formal and informal), the costs of sending it and the form of utilization (consumption, savings and investment), make it difficult to asses their actual and potential impact on the development of the receiving communities.
Despite the great economic, demographic and social impact of international emigration of the Central American population, especially to the United States, there is only a general knowledge of this phenomenon; very little is known about its characteristics, dynamics, trends and impacts at different levels of life: personal, family, community and national. It is said, without having a quantitative updated foundation, that international migration for many Central Americans has been and continues to be a new and efficient strategy to improve their income levels, vis-a-vis the deterioration of their living conditions, the lack of employment and of opportunities to reach a status of well-being and development in their local environment.
The main source of information at present, on the number of Central Americans living abroad comes from information provided by the Research Project on International Migration in Latin America (IMILA) implemented by the Latin American Center of Demography -CELADE- which compiles and processes information coming from the Population Census mainly in Latin America. However, the limitations of the IMILA program are that the figures of Central American emigrants only include those registered officially in the population census and regularly only account for documented immigrants, because it is very difficult for the irregular population to participate in them due to their condition and the fear of being deported.
Before such situation and in order to resolve the lack of integral and updated information on international emigration, the International Organization for Migration -IOM-, under the charge of the subscriber of this paper, applied a novel method in carrying out a National Home Survey to Measure the International Migration of Guatemalans. It is a novel survey because it uses as key informants all the household heads in Guatemala, previously identified as having relatives abroad, that is, the data are obtained from the place of origin of those who reside abroad. In other words, the external emigrant is researched at his (her) last usual residence in his (her) place of origin. This is a different methodology than that of the population census and other household surveys, that only measure foreigners living in the country, but not those who left the country. And if they do, they only try to capture the volume, without going into details about their characteristics. This survey designed by IOM, however, is specific to obtain exhaustive information on the international migration phenomenon.
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