Migration Talk - Making Sense of a World on the Move (Part II)

WASHINGTON, Jul 22 (OneWorld) - Migration has become a major issue in many countries -- both rich and poor. In the second half of this OneWorld dialogue, an expert panel responds to readers' thoughts about global rights and responsibilities.

To share your own thoughts on these issues, click here or at the bottom of this page.

PANELISTS

Michael Clemens, Center for Global Development

Esther Nieves, American Friends Service Committee

Sandip Roy, New America Media

SENDING VS. RECEIVING

Zoe Sullivan: Although there is certainly a trend from poorer countries to wealthier ones, generally the developed parts of Europe, North America, and Asia, even within other continents people move. Brazil and Argentina, wealthier with respect to other Latin American countries, both have immigrant communities and deal with many of the same issues being addressed in the U.S.

Ultimately, people will go where they believe they have a possibility to create a better life, wherever that is. Regardless of where a person chooses to make her/his home, it should be possible to do that.

Sandip: I agree that the world is on the move. We can look for different reasons for this from globalization to climate change to growing wealth gaps. You are right ultimately people will go where they believe they can create a better life. However it is harder to say that regardless of where a person chooses to make her/his home, it should be possible to do that. Then the topsy-turvy world would just tip over. If polls show 46-7 percent of Mexicans want to move to the U.S., we wonder what that would mean for USA if they did. But on the flip side, if they were able to do so what would that mean for Mexico?

REMITTANCES

Jeffrey Allen: How much do remittances help developing countries develop? Are remittances better than aid for a poor country? Should receiving countries take that into consideration when forming their immigration policies?

Michael: Remittances are not aid, as I've written about and I'm sure you understand this, Jeffrey. Take a household anywhere in the world in which a spouse who works in the home buys groceries with money earned by a spouse who works outside the home. Now take the working spouse and put him/her in another country -- that, in broad strokes, is what a remittance is. The same money is changing hands for the same reason; it�s just that the earner is further away, earning more.

When a laborer gives money to his or her spouse in Managua, no one expects that act to "develop" Nicaragua, even if the laborer makes a high salary. But put the laborer in Dallas (and leave the spouse in Managua), and now it's expected that the transfer should develop Nicaragua. Why?

To me, economic development is the creation of systems of interaction that make people in a society better off. A system that allows Nicaraguans to work in Dallas and thereby contribute to their families' well-being in Nicaragua is, therefore, development. This remains true even if those families consume the money instead of investing it (which is what most households do with most intra-household transfers, even when the provider lives at home -- but no one questions it when you or I do it).

Now, are remittances better than aid? I don't think there is a single metric of "good" by which to judge this. Most remittances to poor countries go directly into the pockets of families, and thereby raise their incomes unequivocally. The same cannot be said of aid projects, which are inherently risky ventures that sometimes benefit people substantially and sometimes do not. At the same time, certain aid interventions -- like support for vaccination campaigns -- benefit a very broad cross-section of people in a way that a transfer to a single household does not. So you might say that remittances convey a benefit that is often larger and almost always more certain, whereas aid projects convey a benefit that is far more uncertain, diffuse, and often smaller in magnitude. Neither is strictly "better."

Is it good per se for remittances to a poor country to increase? For a remittance flow to occur, several things must be happening. One of those is that some people have been able to access high-paying jobs overseas, and they are supporting their families back home. Sounds like a good thing. But other things must be going on as well: It must be hard for people to get good jobs where they come from, and it must be the case that a large portion of the laborer's family was not able to go where the laborer is living. Both of those are, for many families, undesirable. I say this simply to point out that when people talk about the rising volume of remittances compared to aid flows, and trumpet how wonderful this is, think carefully. Remittances are a sign of people making money and helping out, certainly, but in some cases they are also a sign of economic stagnation in the sending area, and of split families.

Should rich countries take remittances into account in setting their migration policies? Absolutely. If you want families in Ecuador to be better off, and you're not willing to admit every person from Ecuador who wants to come, then a great compromise is to let Ecuadorian breadwinners come here for a short time and send a lot of money home. This unequivocally helps many families in Ecuador. And by the way, although a lot of attention has rightly been paid to making remittances cheaper, a 10% decrease in the cost of sending remittances only makes current-recipient families better off, and only to a small degree. If you want a big increase in the amount of money families in the countries of origin receive, and if you want more families to benefit than currently do, there is no alternative to simply letting in more people. This can be done in a way that imposes little to no cost on the country of destination, and temporary guest workers are a way to do it.

GOVERNMENT HYPOCRISIES

Prabhat Garg: The country/countries not in favour of migration and/or immigration should not permit the migrants to enter into their boundaries from Day One and if they are allowing the migrants to come in and using their skills or services for some value, knowing fully well that they do not possess the adequate "human capital resources" within and the incoming migrants will be there to help the people and support the economy of that country for getting their survival. Then afterwards, the contribution of migrants cannot be denied in the development of the economy and environment of that country. And that country has no moral, social, human or legal right to throw these migrants out while making excuses and blaming these migrants for one reason or the other.

These migrants be brought in the mainstream of that country and must be treated at par because now it is a global village and every one should have the right to move any where always subject to the well settled principles/ parameters of the Peace, Law & Justice.

Sandip: The U.S. has had a wink-and-nod response to immigration. Essayist Richard Rodriguez discussed those issues in an interview on the UpFront radio show from New America Media. Here's an excerpt of what Richard said: "Mexicans look at the United States and realize that Americans are saying one thing, that they are against illegal immigration, and doing another, they will hire you if you can get across the line." Here's the full interview.

REFUGEES IN SOUTH AFRICA

Miriam Mannak: This is not a question, but more a piece of my mind with regards to migration, as no one seems to be interested in this topic -- except for Perspectives. In 2004, I moved from Holland to South Africa to work here as a freelance journalist. Over the past years I have often come across issues that are related to refugees and asylum seekers.

South Africa is the prime country African refugees turn to when escaping the problems in their home country, whether they are political, social, or of economic nature. There are so many reasons to flee your home country. Malawians flee a life of absolute poverty and hunger. Zimbabweans escape their country because of political oppression and lack of chances. The Congolese are leaving the country because of the ongoing instability and political unrest, etc.

There are no exact figures of how many refugees and asylum seekers reside in South Africa, but estimates vary from 2 to 4 million. This puts tremendous strain on South Africa, which itself struggles with high unemployment rates, poverty, lack of housing, health problems, etc.

In the recent past, there have been quite a few riots by locals against migrants. Shops owned by refugees were demolished and they themselves were chased away from the townships. In Cape Town, in the past 12 months 36 Somalis were killed -- allegedly by angry locals.

The authorities don't make it easy on refugees either. I have written a series of articles for a Cape Town-based newspaper on the way asylum seekers are treated, and it is not pretty.

The point is that migration is a complicated issue, which has more than one side to it. But it needs to be addressed, but not just by shoving migrants aside and treating them as semi-criminals or numbers. Unlike what many people in the West tend to think: most migrants are not trying to take advantage of welfare or social programs, they don�t want to abuse the system. They are people who desperately want a life of dignity, stability and some form of prosperity for which they are willing to work hard. They are people, like you and I.

Esther: Thank you for humanizing this difficult issue.

MIGRATION AND POVERTY REDUCTION

Mohammad Ahsan: If all people who have migrated are given the right to live as a citizen anywhere in the world, then countries would be more economically sustainable. Freedom is poverty reduction and having the right to move freely.

Michael: Thanks, Mohammad. Your point is deep and many people miss it. Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen has gone as far as to say that development is freedom, "the process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy." International migration is not, like international flows of goods and capital, a means to increasing freedom, i.e. a means to development that may or may not work. International migration is a form of freedom, and therefore a form of development.

Esther: Thank you for your perspective.

MIGRANTS AND LANGUAGE

Janet McCullow: What is your view on whether migrants should learn and use the language of their adopted (new) country? Shall governments provide verbal and written translation aid to migrants? Should documents be available to migrants in their language of origin? Should migrants be required to work in the dominant language of the country they migrate to?

Sandip: I think few migrants will NOT want to learn the language of their adopted country since it will make life easier. I think the problem is people who feel that they need to give up one language in order to obtain facility in another. Instead documents should be available to migrants in their language of origin to help the process of adjustment and acculturation happen faster. Keep in mind that for an older person coming to the U.S. for the first time, it's not that easy to pick up a brand new language.

MIGRATION WORLDWIDE

Jeffrey Allen: In recent years, what has been the impact of migration (both immigration and emigration) on Africa? Asia? Latin America? Europe?

Michael: Jeffrey, this is a big question and I will only address a small sliver of it. I study the impact of health worker emigration on Africa. Many people simply assume that this must be a bad thing, since Africa needs doctors and nurses, so we should do what we can to stop these movements. I think this view embodies an oversimplified view of the complex forces that determine how many health workers a country has, what those people do, and how their work eventually translates into better health for ordinary Africans.

The first thing we have to keep in mind when thinking about any skilled-worker movements out of poor countries is that skilled workers are human beings. Not only do they make decisions, and do so for a reason, but they also have rights, ambitions, and dreams. So my starting point in thinking about these issues is that we should be very, very hesitant to take policy steps to make sure people live where 'we' want them to, if those people are demonstrating a clear desire to live somewhere else. Who am I to stand in Heathrow airport and inform a beleaguered Zimbabwean nurse that she must go live under Robert Mugabe, simply because she was born there (and I wasn't)? The benefits of that act to ordinary Africans, if we can contemplate such an act, should be extremely clear.

The next thing to keep in mind is that the degree to which the mere presence of a very highly-trained health professional within the borders of an African country translates into better health for ordinary Africans is very, very complicated. In most African countries, physicians are highly concentrated in urban areas. Where there is any form of private sector, a large fraction of the physician workforce -- even many of those with public-sector jobs -- spends as large a fraction of its time as possible working in that much more profitable arena. In many African countries, large fractions of the best-educated nurses do not work in the health sector at all because conditions are so bad there. Common things like diarrhea and respiratory infections are still some of the top killers in Africa, and most physicians in most African countries simply do not spend a large fraction of their time out in remote, destitute villages or slums taking care of very poor children with diarrhea.

This is not to claim, by any stretch, that physicians and highly educated professional nurses (the ones who get recruited to work abroad) have no public health impact. Certainly they have some. But it is severely limited by several intervening factors, and conditions vary enormously from country to country (Kenya has thousands of unemployed Registered Nurses, Ghana does not). But focusing on the aggregate quantity of highly trained health workers, or counting up how many of them cross borders, ignores vast continents of possibility for how to improve health systems and health outcomes. What about the skill mix of the health workforce -- are the most elite highly-trained health professionals acquiring the skills that are relevant and necessary for the basic health needs of the large majority of the population? How much should a health system be devoted to primary health care, and how much to preventive, public health efforts that can often save far more people? How can incentives in the health workforce be structured to get people out into rural areas and slums at least a fraction of the time? How can we help parents get their sick children to the clinics, and see the clear need to do so? How should medical education be financed, and why should the state maintain a monopoly on it? Hermetically sealing borders does not even touch any of these issues, yet they are all crucial to developing a health system that helps Africans.

Focusing on who's crossing the border is like counting the leaves that are falling off a tree, and not noticing the chainsaw that's cutting the trunk. It distracts attention from the chainsaw, and to that degree it's harmful. I've only touched superficially on some of these issues here; if you're interested in this area I have a paper you might find thought-provoking.

Sandip: According to various sources less than 1 percent of the world's immigrants come to the U.S. Some 1,063,732 documented immigrants were admitted to the U.S. in 2002. Undocumented immigrants added another 300-400,000 per year. There are approximately 175 million migrants in the world. We have heard a fair amount about the impact of immigrants from North Africa in Europe but many other countries are also grappling with immigration-related problems caused by war, famine, economies -- for example Bangladeshis resettling in India have become political hot potatoes.

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