Washington: An estimated 5.7 million Indian workers abroad sent home $27 billion in 2007 to make India the top receiver of migrant remittances while the U.S. was the main remittance source, according to latest World Bank data. Workers from China ($25.7 billion), Mexico ($25 billion), the Philippines ($17 billion), and France ($12.5 billion) made up the rest of top five, the bank's new Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008 released here Wednesday said. While South-South migration nearly equals South-North migration, rich countries are still the main remittances source, led by the US, it said. The US was also the top immigration country in 2005, with 38.4 million immigrants, followed by the Russian Federation (12.1 million), and Germany (10.1 million). Among low-income countries, India had the highest immigration volume (5.7 million), followed by Pakistan (3.3 million). The factbook provides snapshots of statistics on migration, recorded remittances flows and skilled emigration for 194 countries and 13 regional and income groups. "Migration is sometimes used as a political pawn, and policies are too often based on anecdotes or misconceptions," said Uri Dadush, Director of the World Bank's Development Prospects Group and International Trade Department. http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/40548
India is part of South Asia. I don't think South Asia or southeast asia can be decoupled from U.S. Strictly speaking, Asia primarily refers to the Oriental countries of Japan, China, Korea, taiwan, hong kong, etc. I belive those country are decoupled from the U.S. to a large extent due to increase in their internal trade volume and re-emergence of Europe.