Today marks the 13th anniversary of International Migrants Day, a day identified by the United Nations to respect and recognise the freedoms, plights, and fundamental rights of migrants everywhere. However, while the vast majority of global citizens see migrants as a portal for connectivity, 2013 has been a tough year as immigration debates in the Western world become more toxic than ever. Far right parties such as UKIP, le Front National and the Netherland’s Party for Freedom have gained considerable ground, with similar patterns emerging in Australia and the USA. It seems as though the far right are preparing for battle.
In July we saw the controversial ‘go home’ vans parading around London, racism masquerading as politics; October saw eyewitness reports of at least 40 migrants being kidnapped in Mexico – it was ignored and later denied by the Mexican authorities; shocking images shook our television screens when it was reported that ‘more than 360’ migrants had drowned in the Lampedusa disaster after trying to reach Europe; and in August the UN alongside Amnesty International officially condemned Australia’s off-shore processing policy of refugees, branding the treatment received as “cruel, inhuman and degrading”, likely to commit “serious psychological harm”. The British Home Office have become so paranoid in their dealing with non-EU immigration that they have denied the entrance of an estimated 6,000 family members of British Citizens since the new ruling took over in July 2012. When you start looking, the list of blatant human rights abuses against migrants is so extensive and shocking, it is hard to stop.
Governments are just not doing enough to protect the rights of migrants, transmigrants, refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced persons, and as illustrated with the increasingly arbitrary family migration laws in the UK, “when the rights of migrants are denied, the rights of citizens are at risk”. Perhaps this new wave of xenophobia can be blamed on lingering news of the recession, but as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon pointedly stated this time last year, migrant workers can often boost a dwindling economy.
Ban Ki-Moon, 18th December 2012
Although, despite what mainstream media headlines would have us believe, the public at large are becoming more and more open in their willingness to accept migrant workers as a positive. Pew Research’s Global Attitudes Project unearthed statistics that show that Western publics (although still concerned about the level of immigration) are less likely to back tighter controls than they were five years ago.
And rightly so. Immigration has done a lot for this world. We should all be thankful for those transnational travellers who risk social isolation and racist rhetoric overseas. And happily, when you start looking, the list of uplifting success stories is also pretty extensive:
Aminata Sillah, for example, fled war town Freetown in Sierra Leone in 2004. A single mother with two children and three grandchildren, she headed for Canada bringing with her a passion for sewing. On arrival in Winnipeg she began dressmaking for neighbours, before voluntarily teaching inner-city women how to sew, and as a direct result of her passion and hardwork, in 2009 the Winnipeg Central Park Resource Centre was born, helping between 300-500 community members on a daily basis. Another favourite is Aso Tavitian, a Bulgarian Cold War refugee who fled to New York in 1961. Offered a full scholarship by Columbia University that same year, Aso did not disappoint and went on the use his MSc in Nuclear Engineering to create his own successful start-up. So successful, in fact, that he was soon able to give back via the Tavitian Foundation, an education-centred non-profit which has to date sponsored more than 250 young hopefuls.
It is a well-known fact that immigrants in the United States start new businesses and file more patents than US born citizens; Forbes published earlier on this year that relaxed immigration barriers correlate with powerful economic growth; national insurance data in the UK shows that migrants are less than half as likely to claim benefits than UK citizens, having emigrated to work and aiming to do just that. Migrants have done a lot for this world, economically and culturally, and it is unfortunate that their current status as the politicians scapegoat is rarely challenged. As with the vast majority of political controversies, ‘it is inevitable that the poor treatment of migrants today will be our dishonour tomorrow’.
So we should all show solidarity, and we should all celebrate. We should all work together to make the rights of migrants the next milestone in the fight for equality and human dignity worldwide. We should push for a more connected global landscape, and acknowledge migrants as vessels for the change needed to create a fairer world.
Had to be a young lefty Brit writing this claptrap, why do universities churn out these people who place the rights of foreigners above our own tax paying population & job seeking young people words fail me sometimes, don’t you realise we’re a small island with limited resources?
Del, you are absolutely right! I am young, British and, if I had to class myself politically, I suppose that I am comparatively leftist. I’ll assume when you mention ‘small island’ you are talking about the UK so I’ll concentrate my reply to this geographical area.
Firstly, migrants pay taxes too! So when you say ‘rights of foreigners above our own tax paying population’, I’m not entirely sure how to respond. Are the taxes of migrants somehow inferior to the taxes of the British, I wonder?
Between 2001 and 2011 immigration to the UK contributed about £25 billion. Immigrants from the EEA paid in 34% more to the British system then what they took out, and non-EU immigrants contributed with a 2% pay-in. The OECD published a report earlier this year that found that Britain has a fairly high foreign-born population (12% to be exact) but that that population contributes to 1.02% of GDP. If we include pensions, this figure drops down to 0.46%, which is still a positive contribution. In fact, information from various respected research institutions is all conclusive: immigrants to the UK do not drain British resources. I could quote statistics at you for a while, but I hope you look into it yourself. You can find information quoted here: http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_22_13.pdf and http://www.oecd.org/els/mig/imo2013.htm.
There is a different perspective to a merely political and/or economic one and, in my opinion, a more important one. I have worked extensively with asylum seekers, and I have met people who have told me indescribable stories, which probably better explain my leftist views. I would challenge you to look into the eyes of a child who has seen their family murdered, a wife who has seen her husband decapitated, his head used as a football for bored, corrupt soldiers, or a mother who has lost her child to a landmine, and tell them ‘No, I’m sorry, we are a small island with limited resources’.
International Migrants Day isn’t just about gaining that extra 0.46% growth in GDP, it’s about encouraging human solidarity.