> Why can't the family continue to use Western Union
They can, but this is a bad remittance channel.
> Why on earth would someone in the US send Tether as a remittance?
Per the article, this is literally the supposed use case that the CEO of Strike puts forward.
> over time El Salvadorans may come to prefer remittances to be sent in Bitcoin and used immediately to pay for things.
It's possible, but the past ten years of bitcoin failing at the merchant use case suggests otherwise. I won't say it can't happen; but given bitcoin's past repeated failure, I'd want to see it happening.