Somalis Unable to Send Money Home from US

Voice of America ^ | 2-16-2015 | Mohammed Yusuf and Christopher Cruise

[Citizen Zed]

Somalis in the United States are now unable to send money back to Somalia. The final American bank that allowed for sending money there has stopped doing so.

The small Merchants Bank of California was the last bank in the United States that worked with Somali-American transfer companies. The Somali-American companies operate in the same way as the worldwide money transfer companies Western Union and MoneyGram. But they permit people to send money to rural areas of Somalia far from cities and towns.

Last week, however, Merchants Bank stopped helping the companies send money to Somalia.

Anti-terror legislation had stopped most American banks from giving people a way to send money to Somalia. Experts say more than a million Somalis cannot feed themselves. Many Somalis depend on the money sent to them by their friends and family members in the United States and other countries to survive.

Sunrise Community Bank in the U.S. and Barclays Bank in Britain have also closed their Somali transfer accounts. They were worried that the transfer companies were either working directly with terrorists or that the money being sent to Somalia was being given to terrorists.

The United Nations and humanitarian workers warn that Merchants Bank’s decision will hurt Somalia. The money-transfer business there is huge. The United Nations and aid groups in Somalia use money transfers to pay their workers and to pay for projects in small villages and towns.

Aid groups such as Oxfam and Adeso, a non-governmental organization, estimate that Somalis living outside the country send more than $1 billion home every year.

[Paladin2]

I must have been truant the day they explained the underlying theory of that meme.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Good.

[353FMG]

Instead of sending money home, go home!

[Fireone]

“I wonder how much of that money they try to send home is welfare money....”

All of it.