Immigrants living in Greece sent a total of 922 million euros ($1.2 billion) to their countries of origin last year, a 14.6 percent decline compared to the year before, numbers from the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat revealed.
In 2011, they sent back 1.08 billion euros ($1.4 billion) and most of that, 777 million euros, ($1.01 billion) was sent to non-European Union countries. The drop showed how much immigrants, as well as Greeks, have been hit by the country’s crushing economic crisis.
In contrast to the decline reported from Greece, the total amount sent from EU countries (not including the United Kingdom, for which there was no available data) increased by 2% last year from 2010 to 39.13 billion euros ($51.03 billion.) France accounted for 25% of that, or 9.7 billion euros, ($12.65 billion) followed by Italy and Spain, with 19% each. Immigrants in Germany accounted for 8% and those in the Netherlands for 4%, or 1.5 billion euros, ($1.95 billion) according to the Eurostat data.
(Source: AMNA, Eurostat)
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