"Western Union has become a company that values and protects its customers," said Matthew J. Piers, the Chicago lawyer who sued the company. "Nobody was more surprised at the change than me, because I was Western Union critic Numero Uno."

Western Union's zealous pursuit of migrants can be seen in a government office in Manila, where a half million Filipinos a year wait to have their papers processed before leaving for overseas jobs. Everything in the waiting room is labeled "Western Union": the backs of the chairs, the tops of the desks, the bottom of the queue sign and the front of the menu in the adjacent cafeteria.

The Philippines requires each outbound migrant to attend a pre-departure seminar. Western Union, for an extra fee, gets something even more valuable than yellow walls: a chance to offer instructions on sending money home.

The sessions are conducted with "the basic idea of seeking out Western Union when they go abroad," said Steve Peregrino, the company's marketing director in the Philippines. In and around the waiting room, reviews are positive.

Ernald Vincent Mendoza, a restaurant supervisor in Saudi Arabia, dismissed the argument that the company's pricing took advantage of the poor. Though banks are cheaper, the money can take a week to arrive, he said, while Western Union sends it instantly. "If they have good quality and service, you have to pay for that," he said.

Emmanuel Ellorian, a waiter in Dubai, said Western Union agents came to the hotel where he worked and processed the transfers there. "If any of the Filipino clubs have an event," he said, "one of the sponsors is Western Union."

A telegraph giant evolves

Western Union's founders set out in 1851 to build the first telegraph giant. A decade later, they had linked the coasts, a feat celebrated in a Zane Grey novel and a Hollywood film, both called "Western Union." Airmail and faxes left telegrams obsolete, and the company went bankrupt in 1992.

It emerged two years later as a money transfer company — it had been sending cash since 1871 — and was acquired in 1995 by the Colorado corporation First Data. Flush times followed. Fueled by the surge in migration, international money transfers were growing by 20 percent a year.

In 1998, Piers sued the company, alleging that Western Union and a rival, MoneyGram, deceived customers with advertisements like "Send $300 to Mexico for $15," since the companies typically made much more (in this case another $25) by setting foreign exchange rates to their advantage. While denying any wrongdoing, the companies paid millions to settle the case.