The Battle for World Public Opinion | Frontera NorteSur News

November 13, 2010

[On the GFMD & International Migration]

From Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Internationally, migration stands out as one of the most heated issues of the times. Across the world, restrictionist measures increasingly shape public discourse. On November 10 and 11, representatives of 146 governments met in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where they discussed how public perceptions of migrants figure in the contemporary global political landscape.

A consensus on combating the demonization of migrants was evident at the the Fourth Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), but differences emerged on how best to counter anti-immigrant sentiments and whether governments-especially those from the developed world-are doing enough to curb outbreaks of xenophobia and support immigrants.

At one session, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanathem Pillay stressed that governments are obligated to apply international legal instruments dedicated to the rights of migrants. Pillay urged more countries must ratify the Migrant Workers Convention. “It’s shameful that only about 40 states have ratified this convention, which has been around for about 40 years,” she said.

The host country of the 2010 GFMD, Mexico is among nations which has signed and ratified the Migrant Workers Convention.

Based in Switzerland, an international network of civil society organizations is promoting the ratification and monitoring of the agreement, which mandates that signatories accord rights to immigrant workers that are increasingly the source of heated political disagreement in developed nations. The members of the network include Anti-Slavery International, Human Rights Watch, the World Council of Churches and many other labor and human rights advocates across the world.

Fresh from a speech delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations in which he highlighted the “critical role” of immigration in US history, State Department official Eric P. Schwartz led the US delegation in Puerto Vallarta.

In a presentation to the GFMD, Schwartz, an assistant secretary for refugee and migration affairs, spoke about the Obama administration’s efforts to assist local and state governments in refugee resettlement and the integration of newcomers in host communities.

Although perceptions of migrants are shaped by interactions at the local level, it is incumbent on Washington to help ease the transition of migrants and their integration into society, Schwartz said. To do otherwise, he said, represents a federal let-down of local communities.

Government has a role to play in shaping public attitudes about immigration, Schwartz told a packed room, specifically through a leadership that channels concerns and fears, opposes the demonization of immigrants and emphasizes the costs to society of keeping migrants as an “underground population.”

Despite the prevalance of a “difficult conversation” on immigration in the US at the moment, Schwartz said demographic changes were among reasons he was optimistic about the long-term future of immigrants in a nation built up by immigrants. In the not-too-distant future, no single racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority in the US, he added.

A representative of the socialist government of Bolivian President Evo Morales questioned the immigration policies of the US and other developed nations. Eliciting a round of applause from an audience stacked with officials from different governments, Alfonso Ramiro Hinojosa, general director of consular affairs for Bolivia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, slammed measures like Arizona’s SB 1070 law for inflamming public opinion against migrants.

Schwartz countered that the Obama administration opposes SB 1070 and backs comprehensive immigration reform as an answer to the growing attempt by states to assume federal authority. In comments to Frontera NorteSur, Schwartz reiterated that President Obama is against several parts of SB 1070, and both the US president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have taken time to “articulate their set of concerns” about the law, as well as speak out on the general importance of immigration to “our well-being.”

Internationally, SB 1070 continues being a contentious matter. In Puerto Vallarta, flyers were passed out at the GFMD urging readers to contact Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and demand that the 2011 All-Star Game be moved out of Phoenix.

Washington’s response to SB 1070 is still “insufficient,” Bolivian official Hinojosa told Frontera NorteSur. “This law continues generating dramas among migrants in our countries,” Hinojosa said. Bolivia’s posture, he said, is shared by the rest of South America.

In late October, Bolivia hosted the most recent meeting of the South Amercan Conference on Migration, a grouping which brings together 12 nations. The regional sentiment, Hinojosa added, is to uphold a “dignified immigration” that respects human beings who are usually subordinated to the interests of capital.

Founded in 1999, the South American Conference on Migration promotes a gradual but decisive drive towards a “regional integration based on the construction of the free mobility of persons and South American citizenship,” according to an organizational document.

Hinojosa estimated that about 250,000 Bolivians currently reside in the US. In the bigger scheme of things, Bolivia is among countries in the world that could be most impacted by climate change and forced migration – issues which were considered in this year’s GFMD.

According to Hinojosa, President Morales’ government considers a climate agreement at the upcoming Cancun summit a “top priority,” but will not be too disappointed if no accord materializes from next month’s world meeting. The massive turn-out of 30,000 at the Cochabamba climate conference hosted by Bolivia last spring is an example of the inexorable tide in favor of climate action, Hinojosa insisted.

“We’re accumulating forces,” the Bolivian diplomatic official said. “If not Cancun, something soon.”

On immigration, Hinojosa said “double-talk” characterized the stances and policies of developed countries. Besides SB 1070 in the US, he exorciated Italy’s denial of health care to migrants, France’s deportation of Romas and the failure of developed nations to ratify the Migrant Workers Convention.

Hinojosa said he was dismayed that he had not heard a single Mexican official address the massacre of 72 Central American and South American migrants in the northern Mexican border state of Tamaulipas last August. “Not talking about it, doesn’t make it go away,” he maintained.

Not surprisingly, debate at the GFMD examined the role of media in shaping public perceptions of migrants. A representative of Lebanon reported how radio spots promote a positive image of immigrants, whose exodus after war broke out with Israel in 2006 caused a crisis for a small country suddenly short of foreign workers.

An official from the Phillipines described how his government employs the popular soap opera format on television to give migrants a high-profile in the public sphere. Armed with access to all the latest statistics on immigration and its economic impacts, the GFMD should do more in the public relations field for migrants, some speakers concurred.

Several members of non-governmental organizations were allowed to address government meetings of the GFMD. While pledging to continue her work against racism and xenophobia, Carol Barton of the United Methodist Church in the US said economic changes were needed to counter public insecurities that stem from the economic crisis and fan anti-immigrant attitudes.

“Just giving facts and figures doesn’t change the reality of those fears,” Barton said. Concrete action was necessary on home foreclosures, mass unemployment and other problems arising from the Great Recession, she said. Getting to the structural roots of economic problems, the church activist contended, was paramount “if we are going to end this kind of backlash that’s directed against migrants.”

The next GFMD is scheduled for Switzerland in 2011.

-Kent Paterson

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Center for Latin American and Border Studies

New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Will Migrants Gain Respect? | FNS Feature

November 11, 2010

Frontera NorteSur Feature

Will Migrants Gain Respect?

Countering racism. Ratifying the Migrant Workers Convention. Doing away with exploitative guestworker systems. Assuring the rights of migrant domestic workers. Regularizing “irregular” migrants. Special protections for women and child migrants. Treating migrant remittances as an income emergency brake rather than an economic engine. Helping Haiti in its time of dire need.

All the above were on the list of the proposals that emerged from the Civil Society Days of the Fourth Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) held this week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Attended by more than 400 delegates from 80 nations, the GFMD was billed as a major meeting examining the situation of the world’s nearly 215 million international migrants, according to recent numbers from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division.

In a report prepared for national governments also meeting in the same venue this week, delegates criticized the political and economic climate confronting international migrants, and denounced the massacre of 72 Central American and South American migrants in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas earlier this year.

“Civil society decries rising xenophobia that scapegoats migrants for broader societal and economic problems that are not of their making,” the GFMD delegates stated.

Deploring the “heavy emphasis on security,” the civil society report blasted militarization, detention, border controls and deportation.

“We urge governments to explore alternatives to detention that are not only more humane but cost less as well,” the report declared. “Children should not be detained under any circumstance.”

Hosted for the first time by the Mexican government, the GFMD was organized by the private BBVA Bancomer Foundation. Other named sponsors included the Spanish-owned BBVA Bancomer bank, MacArthur Foundation, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and Oxfam Mexico.

Separtely, President Felipe Calderon and First Lady Margarita Zavala attended the Civil Society Days of the GFMD. Security was extremely tight, as Mexican troops with heavy-caliber machine-guns and Jalisco state police in military-style uniforms ringed the Puerto Vallarta International Convention Center where the event was held.

Attendees were forced to pass through two police checkpoints, a metal detector and a bag search before entering the premises. Outside the sprawling conference hall on the edge of the resort town, Mexican soldiers scoured an adjacent estuary.

In prepared remarks that cited Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes and his concept of “mestizaje,” or cross-cultural fusion, Zavala termed migration “fundamental” to the identity of a multicultural Mexico. She also stressed the need to protect and assist child migrants.

Echoing his wife’s previous remarks, President Calderon’s words credited migration for helping develop both his country and the “largest economy of the 20th century” north of the border, despite the hardships suffered by Mexican families.

The leader of a country which is under international scrutiny for the treatment of Central American and other migrants passing through national territory to the US, President Calderon detailed several accords Mexico has struck with Central American countries that are designed to regularize immigration.

“Today, migration is not and never will be a crime in Mexico,” Calderon insisted.

Other Mexican officials who attended the GFMD included Interior Minister Francisco Blake, Jalisco Governor Emilio Gonzalez and Puerto Vallarta Mayor Salvador Gonzalez among many others.

While each country has its own particular experiences with migration, common themes resounded at the GFMD’s Civil Society Days. For example, defending domestic workers from human rights abuses and applying international labor standards to an isolated, vulnerable segement of the workforce was an issue that galvanized delegates from across the world.

Instances of horrific treatment that range from rape to torture happen in “Manhattan and Kuwait,” said US labor organizer Ana Avendano in an interview with Frontera NorteSur.

Avendano, who serves as the assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO for immigration and community action, said the US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not keep numbers on domestic workers, but an estimated 200,000 people of different nationalities toil away in homes in the state of New York alone.

According to Avendano, the AFL-CIO is actively supporting an international campaign for the specific inclusion of domestic workers in the International Labor Organization (ILO), so household employees can enjoy the rights of other workers-the 8-hour day, social security and time for rest and relaxation.

“We expect that it should be adopted,” Avendano said. “Really, this year should be about fine-tuning the convention.” The Obama administration, she said, has taken a stand in favor of a convention for domestic workers in the ILO.

“Domestic work is a particular kind of work, not just because it takes place in the household, but also because of its fundamental importance in the very fabric of society,” states RESPECT, a European network of domestic worker groups and supporters. “Without provision for child-care, care for the elderly, cooking and cleaning, society simply couldn’t function.”

In the US, New York recently passed a law that applies basic labor standards to domestic workers, and the measure could open the door to organizing a heavily immigrant sector of the labor force, according to Avendano.

Nationally, the AFL-CIO is supporting independent domestic worker organizing efforts, Avendano added, as well as a new intitiative called the Excluded Workers Congress that brings together domestic workers, day laborers, taxi drivers, farmworkers, unemployable ex-felons, and other people at the margins of the economy.

International labor advocates gathered in Puerto Vallarta cautioned that resistance to incorporating domestic workers into the ILO is still felt from the governments of Canada, Indonesia and some European Union member states.

“Domestic workers are organizing themselves, but there really is a need to work with the trade unions and civil society,” said Rex Varona of the International NGO Platform on the Migrant Workers Convention.

A big issue swirling around the 2010 GFMD had to do with the role of the forum in formulating international migrant policies. Although it grew out of the United Nations in 2006, the GFMD is not a formal meeting of the world body. Organized on an ad-hoc basis, the forum serves as a sounding board and networking space for both non-governmental and governmental organizations.

Civil society representatives credited the Mexican government and GFMD organizers for making sure that this year’s forum allowed greater opportunities for interaction between governmental and non-governmental delegates, but it is unclear how much weight the non-binding recommendations emanating from the unofficial meeting will have on international migrant policy, or if they will even have an impact on the next UN high-level dialogue on migration scheduled for 2013.

“Civil society and diaspora groups don’t want the Global Forum to be a talk show,” insisted Ndidi Njokou of the United Kingdom-based African Foundation for Development.

The moderator for the Europe-Africa non-governmental group in Puerto Vallarta, Njokou maintained that a standing committee needs to be established to carry out the work of the GFMD between meetings, as well as “an evaluation process for our progress.”

A veteran of the first GFMD in 2006, Njokou said the international gathering has made progress in advocating for migrants. “It is improving as it goes along,” she told Frontera NorteSur. “It has kept improving throughout the years, but a lot remains to be done.”

Nonethless, some pro-migrant organizations from Mexico and other nations showed up in Puerto Vallarta to protest the GFMD. An e-mail sent by a member of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement charged that the GFMD reeked of “illegitimacy” and only included “carefully selected” delegates whose expenses were paid.

At the entrance to the long jungle road leading into the Puerto Vallarta International Convention Center, a metal gate guarded by dozens of Jalisco state police officers barred protesters from the University of North Tamaulipas (UNT) who had made a time-consuming trek from the Mexico-US border to the Pacific Coast.

“In Mexico, we criticize the (US) border wall, but what do we have here?” questioned UNT Rector Francisco Chavira. “They don`t allow people who think differently to enter. The Mexican government is of the classist kind.”

As UNT students chanted “Racist Forum” far from the ears of GFMD delegates, Chavira sharply criticized the meeting as an exercise in demagoguery that “won’t do anything.”

Charging that corruption in the state and federal governments permitted the Tamaulipas migrant massacre to take place, Chavira insisted that human rights were not respected in Mexico.

According to media reports, Mexican authorities have detained at least eight people for committing the Tamaulipas massacre, while six other alleged complices reportedly perished in clashes with Mexican security forces.

Chavira and his students came to Puerto Vallarta with other grievances. The border educator urged his government to give Mexican consulates in the US the power to issue official identification cards to migrants for voting in Mexico. He demanded foreign-owned assembly plants in Mexico pay the equivalent of the US minimum wage, and called upon Mexican money transfer businesses like Banco Azteca and Elektra to return even a little portion of the profits they earn from remittances back to the families of migrant workers.

“The people inside don’t know about the migrant problem,” Chavira said. “This a light forum paid for by a private business, and coming from a private sector that benefits from migrant remittances and pays miserable salaries.”

-Kent Paterson

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu