How Domestic Public Policy Goes Global: Immigrants' Transnational Allocations of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

This exploratory study examines the ways in which immigrants in the USA utilize a domestic public policy, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), for transnational purposes. We analyzed semi-structured qualitative interviews with 32 immigrants in the Boston area to investigate whether and how they spend the refund transnationally. Our analysis showed that most immigrant EITC recipients do not explicitly use their refunds for transnational purposes but about 2/3 of families we analyzed used some form of family income to send cash remittances and gifts to the country of origin, as well as purchase goods and services in, or travel to the country of origin. The 12 study participants who explicitly stated using the EITC for transnational purposes most commonly used it for economic smoothing, with a few using the refund to build assets in the country of origin. We also found evidence of EITCspecific expenditures for travel to the country of origin and the sending of gifts. Based on these descriptive findings, we find that the amounts of money being spent transnationally are generally quite small, with less than a $ 1,000 being sent to the country of origin annually in most cases. We argue that domestic social policy appears to play a transnational role, albeit a small one, and could potentially impact the economic development of immigrant sending countries and even alter immigrant flows from those countries. However, a larger study is necessary to draw definitive conclusions.