Discussing Migration

Latin America and the Caribbean called for the free movement of persons to be included in the Global Compact on Migration, which will be negotiated within the United Nations in 2018.

Nearly a hundred experts on migration from the region took part in a meeting, held at Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) headquarters in Santiago which brought together representatives of governments, international bodies, civil society, and academia.

Louise Arbour, U.N. Special Representative for International Migration said that up to now “the movement of migrants, women, and children has been poorly managed. They first talked about illegal immigrants, and pejoratively of economic immigrants. Xenophobia is an expression of anger and lack of trust in governments,” she said. “The goal is to facilitate regulated migration. It’s not on our agenda to stop the movement of people,” she said in reference to the Global Compact on Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration which is in moving forward within the U.N.

Juan José Gómez, the Mexican ambassador to the U.N. and co-facilitator of the intergovernmental consultations and negotiations for the Compact, said “it is nearly a miracle” to debate the subject of migration at a global level because “for decades the doors of the U.N. had been closed to this problem. To negotiate after debating first “has saved us from negotiating on the basis of preconceptions, prejudices and misinformation. The initial stage of regional debates will allow us to take an x-ray of migration to replace the rhetoric and prejudices with evidence, data and reality,” he said. Gómez said the document “should be realistic and acceptable for all member states, in order for it to be respected.” He also stressed that “migration is a net gain for receiving countries.” He pointed out that 85 per cent of the annual incomes of migrant workers remain in the receiving countries, amounting to three trillion dollars a year.

Laura Thompson, deputy director general of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said that the Compact will reflect “common principles and understandings” and called for “a capacity to manage migration” to prevail, entailing in the first place “protection of the human rights of all migrants.”

Esther Cuesta, an Ecuadorian member of parliament in representation of the migrants of her country, who herself was a migrant for 19 years, told IPS that in the region “it is imperative to eradicate poverty because we cannot prevent abuses, exploitation, human trafficking or migrant smuggling if we do not create peaceful societies with increased well-being so that people don’t have to move and flee from their places of origin in extremely precarious conditions and become victims of totally inhumane exploitation. In the highly capitalist nation-state system that we live in, free circulation of capital has been developed,” she said. “Capital flows to fiscal paradises – evasion that has impoverished many states in our region. But while there is free movement of capital, the movement of people has been restricted, even though there is no capital without human beings, and capital makes no sense without human life,” she complained.

Valter Bittencourt, head of the Network of Migrant Workers of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), with 60 million members from some 60 central unions, told IPS that “the Compact should consider free movement of people, of workers, the right to migrate, to stay or return home in dignity. Immigrants, regularised or not, should have the same rights as all citizens,” emphasised the Brazilian trade union leader. In his opinion, “irregular migration aggravates the vulnerability of workers to exploitation by unscrupulous hands that benefit from this situation. The deficient conditions for development and lack of job opportunities in the countries of origin are the trigger for this kind of immigration, of which some sectors of receiving countries take advantage to get higher profits,” he reflected. “Those affected are the most vulnerable poor sectors, forced immigrants who have no other possibility than to leave their country unprotected, willing to do any work to survive. They have been denied their right to not migrate,” said Bittencourt.