Remittances are cross border transfers from expats of the country receiving the remittances.

If you (as the government of El Salvador) wanted to reduce remittance costs, the way to do that is working directly with the US Fed or with a fintech like Wise to drive down the costs of cross border payments (especially when dollars are used internally in El Salvador).

Remittance is money sent back to the country by expats - like, for example, from a family member who left the country to find a better paying job sending regular checks back to their family in their country of origin.

Sent but not for a purchase is also how I look at it. One thing to keep in mind is that remittance numbers are always only estimates because of the amount of remittances that happen with physical cash on bodies crossing borders.

Emigrants sending money back home for their family--generally family--so they can spend it however the hell they want, on whatever they need most. And they do talk a bit about how much is needed for this and for that, and how much they saved by going out of their way out of respect for the emigrant, eg the Salvadoreño in California working his ass off and getting cheated constantly by earlier immigrants.

So I had to take landlords to court, so far I've taken one and she got treated like crap by the court for her lies, she lost every part of my case against her. She owes me money, she promised the court to pay $100 a month, missed her first payment, owed it on the spot. And the next landlord too, same shit, didn't want to repay the deposit. Both were Spanish-speaking, bad English, but the thing was most of their tenants were illegal immigrants, who couldn't take their rent seekers to court.[1] Both of them systematically cheated their renters because they never got taken to court. Thought court was a gringo thing.

Pajarito nuevo la lleva. The new kid in the game is "it" in the game of tag.

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[1] Rentee is a neutral term, not meant pejoratively, that's not the intent. Landlord implies nobility, the "lord" part is a no-go. And "land" too, it's a whole thing, where really they provide permission to occupy a volume, I'm not exactly going to drill for oil, and it's not like that "landlord" has mineral rights over it either, doesn't own a spherical sector all the way to the center of the earth, and it doesn't extend that far above either. That would be land, a cut of the universe such that the ownership of the entire Universe were defined by the ownership according to the law of zones of the Earth's surface.

Now, formally seeking rent and providing something in exchange, so for instance if a rent seeker does a really good job with maintenance the rent is well earned. It doesn't have to be difficult, the rentee can just be really good at repairs and do them perfectly at the first attempt. There's other ways to pull one's weight as a rentee, it's just the intent--in particular with what is termed rent-seeking is in economics getting a check every month for capital--meaning having money before others, people younger than you. Pajarito nuevo la lleva. The concept of capital, tied to ownership of the Universe, called "land." Things could be different though, now that I'm in a good place I can work on making things fairer for both renter and rentee. Turns out the current arrangement regarding capital, land, and necessity is unfair to both.

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But what was unfair to me alone, was stealing the deposit. Spending it right away. Turns out an immigrant from a place near Salvador told me, with the same woman who stole my deposit, he paid a deposit too but then subtracted it from the first rent payment. The other thing you can do is write down the serial numbers of the bills, insist they have to pay back those specific bills with the same serial numbers, to prove they didn't just squander the money and make up shit instead of failing to pay it back. You can write the serial numbers on the contract they have to sign when they receive the deposit, which you ALWAYS have to do and which rentees will always accept doing. In addition demand receipts, like by text message, as they receive the rent.

Both of these losers tried cheating me with the receipts, like complaining about having to make them or writing stupid shit "dll" instead of "dólares", or trying to never do them. Pablo César Miranda (said his name was Julio César, as far as I can tell both are fictional names so I'm not actually anybody a real man) saying "you make me uncomfortable" with demanding a receipt yeah asshole ding ding ding we have a winner! Because that's what means you can't fuck me over like you do to all your other tenants, like Luis Santos and presumably Osvaldo. Your discomfort tells me I'm acting perfectly. And I tried leaving on a good note, cleaned everything up great specifically for the deposit, left him a six-pack of the beer he liked, but then...didn't pay back the deposit. Turned a good relationship into a bad relationship, gratitude into debt. Means he thinks he can steal from me. Well I already started treating him like shit, told him the price went up, and it's still going up. Only going up. I'm not angry, bitter, frustrated I'm empowered. And I'm acting on behalf of all the immigrants who they robbed with impunity.

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Third time in the recent days we've talked, alisonkisk! I actually was looking through your history because you said something really smart asking if I said torture victims were liars, remember? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31408927 Just seeing if you said other smart things, in this case you asked another smart question. Upvoted of course, second person after cercatrova I engage with.