percent; by comparison, in 2016, El Salvador and Honduras, two countries with large emigrant populations working in the United States, received 16 and 18 percent, respectively, of their GDP from workers abroad sending money home. Tajikistan’s population recently eclipsed 8 million; at any given time, well over a million of those 8 million people live and work in Russia. For Tajiks, the train used to be the primary means of reaching Russia. Demand was once so high that desperate crowds formed at the train station in Dushanbe to buy tickets. Now, regular flights between Dushanbe and many Russian cities have become the preferred mode of travel, even though plane tickets can be a few hundred dollars more expensive. “People only ride the train once,” a conductor on a— third class, car four — held 54 passengers: 52 men, one woman, and her infant daughter. A narrow, paisley-carpeted passage ran the length of the open car; exposed, too-short beds were stacked on either side, and feet splayed out into the aisle. The train’s tracks are a relic of the Soviet Union and cover some 2,000 miles, crossing five borders. The route runs from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan, then into Turkmenistan, back into Uzbekistan, up into Kazakhstan, and then into Russia. Since Tajikistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose affiliation of former Soviet republics, citizens of Tajikistan are allowed to enter Russia without visas. A transit agreement allows visa-free travel through the other countries, so long as the migrants do not leave the