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Showing posts from June 20, 2014

Bangladeshis in India sent back $6.6 billion last year, 6% of their homeland’s GDP

  Bangladesh receives nearly half of its total remittances from India. Migrant workers from the impoverished South Asian country sent home $14 billion last year, according to the World Bank. Bangladeshi workers in India transferred more than $6.6 billion to their home country, making them the biggest source of remittances to Bangladesh. This is more than four times the money being sent from Saudi Arabia, the second-highest contributor. India is a preferred destination among Bangladeshi migrants because of the low cost of migration. “Migrants can avoid securing a plethora of documents including issuance of passports if they migrate to India,” says a study published by the  While there aren’t recent data available on the total number of Bangladeshis staying in India, we do know that nearly 500,000 visas were issued in 2012-13. Illegal immigration has become a hot-button issue in India. Prime minister Narendra Modi reiterated his strong stance against illegal immig...