Bill 1813, Border Wall Funding Act of 2017, presented to the United States House of Representatives at the end of March by Mike Rogers, Representative of the 3rd District of the Alabama Congress, who is fortunately still not voted, provides that if the beneficiary of a transfer of funds lives outside the US, 2% of the amount will automatically be deducted in US dollars prior to sending the funds. This law would apply for 5 years, the time to build the wall between Mexico and the United States, one of the campaign promises of US President Donald Trump, whose cost is estimated at more than $20 billion...

If this law were passed, nationals of the 42 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America would pay this new tax on remittances from the United States to their countries of origin.

List of countries covered by the law H.R. 1813 :

Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Cuba, Cayman Islands, Haiti, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela Aruba, Curaçao, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominican Republic, Dominican Republic, Bahamas , Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Grenada, Guyana, Suriname, Guyana, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.

Several observers agree that if this bill were passed, it could have serious repercussions on remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean. Recall that the World Bank (WB) had already warned last April against the temptation of some wealthy countries, including the United States, to tax outgoing money transfers, to increase their revenues and supposedly to discourage illegal immigration. The World Bank stressed that a tax on transfers from certain diasporas could divert money flows to other countries and to informal, unregulated and unsafe channels.

PI/ HaitiLibre