A lower percentage of Mexican workers in the U.S. is sending money to family members back home, a report showed Wednesday. The percentage of workers who regularly sent remittances home fell to 64% in the first half of 2007 from 71% in the same period last year, the Inter-American Development Bank said in a study of remittance patterns. The reduction was deepest in 40 U.S. states where Latin American immigration is a more recent trend, such as Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, where it plunged to 56% this year from the average 80% in 2006. ‘In the new destination states, around half a million migrants have stopped sending money home,’ said Donald F. Terry, the bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund official who commissioned the survey. ‘This means that over the past years 2 million people in Mexico have lost a vital lifeline,’ he said. Mexico is the primary destination for U.S. immigrant remittances. Remittances to Mexico grew 23% from January to June of last year but grew only 0.6% in the same period this year, according to the Central Bank of Mexico. Remittances sent by Central American immigrants grew 11% in the same period. […]