Pradeesh Athekkatil, the youngest of five brothers, had worked as a driver for a limousine company in the United Arab Emirates. He returned to India after not being paid for three months. (Ashiq MK for The Washington Post) Migrant workers are not only critical to the countries where they work but also a vital source of income back home, sending money to pay for daily expenses, housing, education and medical care. Such remittances hit a record high of $554 billion in 2019. This year, however, the World Bank expects remittances to fall by 20 percent, which would be the sharpest decline on record. For some countries, that drop will be a crushing blow. In Nepal, Honduras, Haiti, Lesotho and Tajikistan, for instance, remittances represent more than 20 percent of gross domestic product. Even for a large economy like India, remittances are important: Last year, they outstripped the total amount of foreign direct investment in the country.