Viewpoints and Advocacy

Themes and Issues

Migration and Development

The "Issue of the Decade": Migration and Development
By John K. Bingham, Head of Advocacy, the International Catholic Migration Commission

Consider if you will 3 images:

• $232 billion US dollars a year. That's 232 with nine zeros after it. That's what the World Bank estimates migrant workers around the world sent home to their families and countries of origin-in 2005 alone! It's a figure nearly 3x the amount of official development assistance provided to low-income countries by all governments combined.
  How much is $232 billion US dollars? If you were to lay them in a line side-by-side, those dollars would circle the planet at the equator 87 times. So it is not only the workers who are crossing borders. However…

• Just in 2005, some 645 more migrants were documented as having drowned in the waters between Africa and Europe, more than a few of the bodies washed up on famed beaches, mere meters from where tourists vacationing from their own work sunned themselves. Another 473 migrants-human beings-were found dead of thirst, dehydration and exposure in the desert between Mexico and the United States.
  And the year 2005 was no better than others. In the sea or on the sand, dying in the water or for lack of it, those single-year death tolls are each higher than the total number who died trying to cross the infamous Berlin Wall in its entire existence. At the same time…

• Since 1990, dozens of countries around the world have implemented special legislation and no less than 35 programs to legalize over 5.3 million migrants. But illustrating the inconsistency and even the tragi-comic contradictions in how some national legislatures respond to immigrants, the United States is currently considering not one but two proposed laws. One would legalize as many as 10 million undocumented migrants already in the US, most working at least one job. The other proposal? It would make all of those immigrants criminal felons-along with churches and anyone else who helped them even when they were hungry, hurt, sick, or exposed to the rain or cold.

These 3 images converge in the news today, and are part of one of the today's hottest topics in international debate: migration and development.

Worth discussing carefully

There's obviously a lot of money involved, senseless human death, and an array of belated, scattered and all too often hostile responses to a phenomenon that is not only worldwide, but positive: modern international migration.

There are 200 million migrants living today in a country other than the one in which they were born. The vast majority have the legal right to work and reside in the country in which they live, including a large number that have become citizens there.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that about half of all international migrants are in the labour force. In fact, as it has been since the beginning of recorded history, the search for work continues to be one of the principal forces that "pushes" migrants abroad.

History however is also full of the complementary "pull" force, that is, nations in search of workers from other lands. But today, particularly in wealthier countries, the unprecedented confluence of three extraordinary demographic streams is intensifying that pull: the "graying" (aging) of their societies, the birth dearth, and the massive gap in crafts and services left by a generation's pursuit of higher-level education and the professions. The result is becoming more and more an epic matching of supply and demand: millions of migrants desperate for work among countries urgently seeking millions of workers.

Now long underway, globalization processes only turbo-charge those push and pull factors.

A Globalization Check-list

If one were to make a list of social forces that are bringing our world increasingly closer, it would include global trade, services, commerce, communications, transportation and migration. In all of those areas except one, the nations of the world have come together to develop regional and international mechanisms to achieve greater coherence, efficiency and progress.

The dramatic exception has been international migration.

Until now.

A Time to Talk: The UN High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development

On September 14 and 15th, the United Nations General Assembly is dedicating its one and entire "High Level Dialogue" to the topic of international development and migration.

The dialogue is the culmination of 3 years of preparation, including:

• international and regional conferences organized by the United Nations, the International Organization for Migration, the Global Commission on International Migration , and a number of governments;
  

• the development and publication of extensive new research and reports on migration and development, including a 90-page report of the UN Secretary General issued in May, and most recently
  

• interactive hearings in July that gave non-government organizations, civil society and the private sector the opportunity to express their concerns on international migration and development directly to the General Assembly ahead of the dialogue in September. With attendance and participation both greatly exceeding the expectations of the UN organizers, some 93 member states were present at the hearings and listened, with over 20 directly responding with perspectives or questions. Several Catholic organizations spoke at the hearings, including the Jesuit Refugee Service, the Servicio Jesuita para Migrantes de Centroamérica, the Scalabrinian Center for Migration Studies of New York and Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinamericanos, Franciscans International, the Association Sisters of the Presentation, and the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC).

The Church's Role in the UN High Level Dialogue

According to the report of the UN Secretary General, "The world still has only a weak understanding of the interplay between international migration and development."

Though it may not know all there is to know about that interplay, the Catholic Church knows migration and it knows development, and brings to the High Level Dialogue and its follow-up valuable experience as well as core beliefs in human dignity, rights, the common good, solidarity and development.

The Church knows migration from working with and alongside migrants and their families every day, whether with or without legal migration status, regardless of faith, race or nationality in countries of origin, transit and destination, on boats, beaches and borders.

The Church knows development from its global and grass roots experience working for the development of people, communities and nations throughout the world. Inspired by the Gospel and encouraged by leaders such as Pope John XXIII, who famously noted that "development is the word for peace," Catholic parishes and dioceses, organizations of priests, religious and lay people have run and supported countless development programs worldwide in health and life support, general education and skills training, agriculture, microenterprise and finance, and human rights.

Much of this work in migration and development has been done in partnership with government and private funders. More importantly however, is that this work in migration and development is imagined, organized and achieved in solidarity with those most affected by migration and development: the people themselves. For above all, in the words of Cardinal Raffaele R. Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, "What the world needs is a globalization of solidarity,"

5 Messages on Migration and Development

With 172 members worldwide, comprising Bishops Conferences around the world and their designates (including a number of Caritas organizations), the International Catholic Migration Commission emphasizes that in all considerations and conclusions on migration and development, the central place belongs to migrants and their rights.

In that spirit, ICMC advocates the following 5 points in particular:

• First, migration and development work best when basic human rights are respected. Rights are not the 'opposite' of practical; in fact rights solve problems. We would mention five human rights especially important to migration: the right to life; the right to work and to be paid a fair wage; the right to movement, including out of and back to one's own country; the right to stay in one's own country -- closely related to the right to development; and the right to participate actively in decisions that affect one's life, family and community.
  
  Protection of these rights reduces the need for migration, since lack of rights in their home country is often a factor that leads people to emigrate. Respecting rights by providing legal avenues for migration also reduces irregular migration, smuggling and human trafficking and reduces opportunities for shadow markets based on hidden workers and off-the-books enterprises.

• Second, there are several international frameworks on the rights of migrants and their families, including three developed by the ILO and the most recent of the 7 UN human rights treaties, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. Though the Convention went into effect in July 2003, only 34 UN member states have ratified it to date. And while all of the other 6 human rights treaties describe fundamental rights that apply to migrants, whether forced or voluntary, with or without papers, only the Migrant Workers Convention includes them all-and has its own special committee to support them. Pope John Paul II advocated forcefully specifically for that Convention, and we urge the rest of the UN member states to ratify it.

• Third, we are most concerned about the right of migrants to themselves participate directly in the discussions and decision-making that affect them. Unfortunately, there is no regular involvement of migrants or migrant organizations contemplated thus far in the High Level Dialogue or its follow up We recommend the formal and immediate creation of a representative body of migrants to participate fully in this process.

• Fourth, we welcome the new focus of international debate on the positive aspects of migration, and note the tremendous attention to the economic, labour and development benefits that migration offers to both sending and receiving countries. However, migrants are not just economic entities or units of labour. Migrants are human beings, with families, with social natures, roles, contributions to make and rights. We must beware purely economic or utilitarian approaches to human beings.

• And finally, in all the talk about migrant labour, we must never forget those who need special protection, who might not be able to work, or whose work has even hurt them, especially refugees, victims of trafficking, internally displaced persons and other forced migrants. There can never be subordination of those who need special protection in favour of those who don't.

A Time To Act: Building the Bridge Between Migration and Development

In endeavouring to encourage a more positive approach to the "issue of the decade," the UN Secretary General says that what is needed is "sustained consideration of international migration." He is right to think beyond immediate results for the High Level Dialogue, but he is also right to be optimistic. This High Level Dialogue signals a global moment of choice: an opportunity to choose the path from chaos to coherence.

ICMC is one of five non-government organizations chosen to attend and speak at the High Level Dialogue. Our message is quite simple: on the path from chaos to coherence, human rights is the bridge-the missing link-between migration and development. Together with migrants everywhere, our Church is ready to help build that bridge.