Guatemala and the USA 2009

The Sunday edition of the Prensa Libre had an interesting piece about this country's relationship with Uncle Sam. It was backed up by the following stats:

- There are 1.2m Guatemalans resident in the USA, 40% of them legally
- 27,929 of the other 60% were deported in 2008, up from just 7,025 in 2005
- Those that remained sent back $4.3b in remittances
- Just over 40% of everything that Guatemala produces is exported to the US, but this still represents only 7% of Guatemalan GDP. Draw your own conclusions...

The economy here has been growing at 4.5% per annum but this is likely to slow to around 3% in 2009. Still, that's equivalent to the proportion that the UK economy is likely to shrink by in the same period.