When Malick completed his first day of work in the U.S. demolishing a house, he immediately took all the cash he had been paid and sent it to his mother, father, children, and other family members in rural Mauritania and in Senegal.
Malick, 39, was part of a group of new asylum seekers from West Africa who arrived in the final years of the Biden administration.
(Malick and others in this story are using only their first names while their immigration cases are pending).
But now, with President Trump back in office and promising a crackdown on immigration, Malick and others in his cohort of recent migrants are trying to send as much money home as possible.
“When Trump came with his discourse that he will fight against the immigrants, it motivated everyone to send more money because you don’t know where things are going to fall,” he said. “I’m only saving something for my lawyer,” he added. “If it wasn’t for that, I’d send money until one dollar remained in my bank account.”
The remittances that recent West African immigrants like Malick and the overall diaspora send back home play a key role in the economic stability and growth of their home countries. Under Trump’s proposed policies, less immigration and more deportation could be a serious blow for Sub-Saharan African economies, where remittances make up a significant portion of gross domestic product.
“Remittances are a crucial component of wealth-building in Africa,” said Cynthia Tagoe, senior research fellow at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research in Ghana. Remittances support household incomes, usually going towards things like medicine, food, and education.
Asylum seekers are eligible to apply for work permits 150 days after they file for asylum, though some find informal work beforehand and some wait months to receive their work permits even after applying.
Oury, a 39-year-old asylum seeker from Guinea, has worked in restaurants in Manhattan since the summer of 2024, shortly after his arrival in the United States. “I send 200 dollars every month, and that’s obligatory,” he said. “Even if that’s all I earn, I have to send that.”
Oury’s brother Mamoudou receives that money back home in Conakry, Guinea, where he uses it to take care of two siblings and their father, all of whom are sick and can’t work, as well as ten children. The exchange rate varies, but the $200 USD that Oury sends comes out to about 1,800,000 Guinean Francs.
“Our father is almost 90, and our sister is blind and can’t work,” Mamoudou said. “The medicine my father takes costs between 450,000 and 500,000 Guinean Francs every twenty days. Sometimes it’s even 700,000. That medicine is necessary for my Papa.”
And then there’s education for the kids. Mamoudou said, “Some of the kids are in public school, which is far away and overcrowded. We send the younger kids to a private school nearby so that they can study better. That costs about 150,000 Guinean Francs (about 17 USD) per child per month.”
US inflation in recent years has made it harder for African migrants to send money home. Partly as a result, remittances to Sub-Saharan African countries had already been hurting and even decreased slightly in 2023 despite a significant increase in migration. With higher costs for goods and services in the US, immigrants have less money left over to send home.
Now experts worry that remittances could get much worse under Trump. They say that a combination of limited immigration, increased deportations, and further inflation will cripple the remittance economy.
The Trump administration’s decision to shutter USAID has drawn headlines, but the loss of remittance revenue could be a more significant blow to Sub-Saharan Africa. That’s because remittances surpass development assistance and foreign direct investment in the region.
“The amount of US aid to Sub-Saharan Africa is dwarfed by remittances,” said Cullen Hendrix, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “If Africans cannot come to the United States to earn, supporting not just the continent’s economy but the United States’ as well, it would be a big shock across the continent.”
The total amount of remittances sent from the US to Africa is much smaller compared to Latin America and the Caribbean. But remittances account for up to 7.6% of GDP in West Africa, compared to 4.5% in Mexico, which receives the most remittances from the U.S. of any receiving country in terms of volume. And because many people use unofficial transfer methods, economists estimate that the true number of remittances is much higher.
Remittances are crucial for the larger economies in the region like Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal, according to Ezechiel Nassou, a public policy consultant and founder of the Advocacy Group for African Youth at the UN. If demand for sending those remittances decreases with fewer senders, the fees for sending those remittances, which are already the highest in the world, could increase and restrict money transfer even more.
“Stricter immigration controls could increase transfer costs and reduce disposable income for families, potentially affecting local economies,” Nassou said.
While it is too soon to tell exactly how the volume of remittances will shift under Trump, according to Nassou, anti-immigrant sentiment can influence remittance patterns. “Some migrants may send money home more quickly, but more importantly, they tend to increase investments in their home countries–real estate, businesses, savings–as a way to secure their long-term future,” said Nassou.
That’s true for Magatt, 39, who is from Mauritania and now lives and works in Cincinnati. When Trump was elected, he said, “I sent money to my family just in case. So that if in two months they deport everyone at least I made this gesture.” Magatt said that he knew families who had sold their land and houses to allow someone to come to the United States.
Back in Conakry, Mamoudou said that concern over Trump’s immigration agenda is widespread. “Everyone talks about it here,” he said. “Everywhere you go, that’s what you hear, that’s what you talk about: ‘What’s going to happen with Trump? What will the migrants do?’”