The paper intends to look back at how remittances sent by international migrants worldwide have become important for development in the last 30 years. The global economic crisis has made migration & remittances an issue for many developing countries. The data for 2009 show that remittance flows to developing countries have been remarkably resilient, while debt flows collapsed & FDI declined by a third. Migrants seem willing to wait out the crisis as prospects at home are often even worse. The paper intends to give an overview of crisis, migration and remittances in different world regions in the global era based on data from the World Bank, the International Organization for Migration & the International Labor Organization.