At the PGA migrant rights are an international movement for human rights

By Chris Zepeda-Millan

Both activists and scholars have long noted the global forces – from colonization to free-trade agreements – that have initiated international migration. Yet for the most part U.S. policymakers and immigrant rights activists continue to analyze, organize, and push for legislative “reforms” that are purely national-based. Meanwhile, the corporations and governments of the First-World nations that have kept the global south underdeveloped continue to work at transnational levels such as through the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).

In response to the latter phenomenon, through the People´s Global Action on Migration, Development, and Human Rights (PGA), migrants and migrant rights activists from across the world have come together to say Ya basta [enough] with the militarization of borders! Ya basta with the criminalization, detention, and deportation of refugees and people without papers!

Migrants Building A People's Global Struggle for Justice and Human Rights

Migrants from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America have gathered in Mexico City to re-frame the migration debate from one that focuses on the “costs and benefits” of migrants to “host countries,” to one that looks at migration as reparations for the historical and current oppression and exploitation of Third World nations.

The PGA is a dynamic and exciting development in the global struggle for migrant rights. If the U.S. immigrant rights movement hopes to survive and be relevant, we cannot continue to try to put band-aids (e.g. national immigration reform) on an amputated leg (Third World underdevelopment as a result of wars and neoliberalism).

We need to learn from and work with the groups involved with the PGA and begin to simultaneously analyze and organize at the local, national, regional, and global levels with other migrant rights activists around the world!

Chris Zepeda-Millan is an activist-scholar who is researching issues and developing insights and analyses on immigrant rights. He is a Ph.D. Candidate at Cornell University.