Viewpoints and Advocacy

Themes and Issues

Migrant Rights

Rights Away from Home: Workers, Women and the World and the Convention on Migrant Workers

• Introduction
• Part 1. FIRST "W": WORKERS. Let's focus on the Convention and Committee that monitors it.
• PART 2. SECOND "W": SO LET'S TALK ABOUT WOMEN: What does the Convention say (and not say) about women migrant workers in particular?
• PART 3. THIRD "W": The World : A brief observation about the recent report of the Global Commission and possible new approaches to migration, labor and development.
• I'd like to close with 5 BRIEF PROPOSALS & a CONCLUSION

I'd like to close with 5 BRIEF PROPOSALS & a CONCLUSION

• Mexico should demonstrate a model response to the recommendations that the Committee on Migrant Workers makes in its examination of Mexico's report this year.
  
  
• Mexico needs to continue as the apostle of ratification of the Convention on Migrant Workers, in particular among its neighbors to the north. It is especially important to continue monitoring developments in the US these days for immediate or longer-term opportunities to push for fuller recognition of migrant rights, including an appreciation of the Convention's logic that protecting migrant rights actually reduces irregular migration.
  
  
• Mexico should take the next step-and again lead the world-by declaring the competency of the Committee on Migrant Workers to receive and consider complaints between States and from or on behalf of individuals, as provided for under Arts. 76 and 77 of the Convention, to expand the processes available to enforce worker rights.
  
  
• A push is needed to improve the Convention for women, for families, and for workers who actually exercise their rights:
  • The Convention should require States of employment to give more and special attention to women, including:
    • Social and legal services for women and girls who have been victims of trafficking or migration-related violence, including their right to apply for independent legal status;
      
    • The right of a wife and dependent unmarried children to live and work in the State that has authorized the husband's employment-which would expand current Article 44 from a recommendation to a requirement;
      
    • Explicit policies requiring fair employment and equal pay for women; and
      
    • Fair integration and education opportunities for women, beginning with major language training initiatives. The current Article 45 stops too soon when it speaks only of educating the children of migrant workers in the local language for school purposes.
      
      

  • The Convention should do more to preserve family unity:

    • for irregular as well as regular migrants;
    • for families "broken" by migration, to avoid parents taking desperate measures to be reunited with spouses and children, including smuggling and other forms of migration susceptible to trafficking and abuse; and
      
    • for parents, especially mothers, the right to visit children in countries of origin without losing status. Article 38 should be upgraded from a recommendation to a right and made explicit about parental visits.
      
      
  • The Convention should guarantee immunity from expulsion and other immigration-related penalties so that workers and their families (particularly those that are undocumented) are not afraid to exercise or enforce their rights under the Convention, especially the right to emergency medical care and to wages promised by an employer for work already done.
    
    
• Thankfully, at the UN High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in September 2006, one of the four "roundtables" will have a human rights focus. It is imperative in all the talk about economics and labor, about remittances and development, about "migration management," about temporary, circular and other possibilities of non-permanent migration, not to lose sight of the human being at the center of all migration, the purposeful human being who has rights as an individual and as a member of a family and at least two societies.

Conclusion

The link between migration and development is complicated and multi-layered, and the search for new and sensible international policies is one of the great challenges of our age. One great risk for States and international institutions is to oversimplify a response to the challenge by trying to pick and choose among migrants (a) who will be "temporary," when experience tells us that most long-term migrants become permanent, or (b) who will stay and who will return, even if the labor needs of States of employment and the development needs of States of origin seem clear and compelling.

There is a beautiful line, full of inspiration, hope and possibility, in Mexico's report this week to the Committee on Migrant Workers: "Acutalmente se está trabajando en una nueva cultura con el propósito de recuperar la dignidad de hombres, mujeres y niños obligados a salir de sus países en busca de mjores perspectivas." ["Efforts are being made," it says, "to shape a new culture in which men, women and children who are forced to leave their countries in search of better prospects can regain their dignity."] Ladies and gentlemen: our Church agrees with all its heart. Como se dicen al otro lado en esta primavera: Si se puede! Because as the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families also makes plain, again and again: migrant workers are more than just laborers and economic entities-they are human beings and social entities, with families, and have rights accordingly. Migrants are not commodities and rights are not concessions. That's what we learn from men like the two workers in Farmingville, and from women like the lady who stood up and said NO to the group that trafficked her.

Muchas gracias. Espero tengamos un congreso positivo!