The Answer is Social Equality, Not Walls
by Tito Drago
MADRID — Walls, electrified barriers, military operations and police presence are not enough to stop the waves of migrants from impoverished countries to rich, industrialised, or at least less poor nations.
The migrational flows that the major news media cover most are those that head towards industrialised countries: from Latin America to the United States, and from Africa, the Arab world, Latin America and Eastern Europe to the countries of the European Union.
But little attention is paid to the flow of migrants within the developing South, with Argentina (despite its economic crisis), Egypt, Jordan, Morocco or South Africa drawing people from their neighbouring countries who seek a better life.
Spanish judge Francisco Serrano Castro is clear in his opinion about these phenomena. He lives in Seville, capital of Andalusia, the southern Spanish region on the Mediterranean that receives a flood of immigrants from Arab countries and Sub-Saharan Africa, many who lack proper documents or visas.
Crossing the Mediterranean in small, unseaworthy boats, the illegal immigrants ”only objective is to flee hunger, extreme poverty, misery and desperation,” he said in a conversation with IPS.
Often the final destination of these journeys is death by drowning. Many more would-be immigrants are taken into custody by police.
If they are able to get past the obstacles, the new arrivals must wander about, looking for jobs — and will be paid low wages precisely because they do not hold legal immigrant status.
The southern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, including the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa, and the Canary Islands are the areas where most of the irregular migrants enter Spain by sea.
Some European governments are taking extreme measures to stop the influx of foreigners. Britain and Spain this month began to dispatch combat aircraft to patrol the Strait of Gibraltar and neighbouring areas.
These patrols come in addition to those already conducted by warships.
Furthermore, Spain has constructed walls — complete with radar and electronic surveillance equipment — along the Ceuta and Melilla borders with Morocco.
Stricter laws, beefing up border patrols and building walls along borders have not reduced the flow of immigrants, but rather have pushed up the number of drowning deaths associated with the increased attempts to cross to Spain aboard precarious boats.
In the first 10 months of this year, the bodies of 88 would-be immigrants were found along Spain's coastline, 383 shipwreck victims were rescued, 17,061 people were intercepted and 78,000 more were detained after entering the country. The death toll is twice what it was in the same period in 2002.
Manuel Pimentel, former minister of labour and social affairs for the José María Aznar government, underscores that Spanish society bends over backwards to help those who arrive in the country with money, but rejects the immigrants who are not rich.
He asserts that Spaniards ”are not necessarily racist, but we are classist.”
A similar opinion is held by José Chamizo, a Catholic priest, historian, poet and people's defender in Andalusia. ”It is not rejection of the immigrant, but of the people who do not have money.”
”The Spanish coast is full of drug traffickers from other countries, and I don't think anyone has ever asked them for their immigration documents,” said Chamizo.
The priest agrees with judge Serrano Castro that what motivates people to make the often-perilous journey to Europe is hunger, that they cannot survive in their home country, so seek a better fate in another.
To confront this phenomenon, repressive or dissuasive measures have proved useless. And frequently among the migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Spain are women who are pregnant or who are travelling with newborns.
According to Serrano Castro, the key — or one of the keys — to halting the migrational flows is to ”foment development in the Third World... development that is sustainable over the long term would also be beneficial for the First World.”
If the living standards of potential irregular migrants can be improved, these individuals would be more likely to remain in their home countries, he said.
An association of non-governmental organisations specialising in development cooperation maintain that this objective should prompt immediate compliance with the United Nations goal for industrialised countries to set aside 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product for international development assistance.
Those contributions, says the association, should be made without strings attached, or trade requirements or any obligation to use the funds for contracts with companies from the donor country.
The organisations also argue that it is essential to begin a process for opening up the markets of the industrialised world to products from developing countries, and to fight the monopoly of industrial patents.
They also demand changes in the international financial system in order to balance out the rights and obligations of the developing South and the industrialised North.
The current U.S. foreign debt tops 2.2 trillion dollars, while the combined debt of developing countries is 2.5 trillion, says Ann Pettifor, head of Jubilee Research, an organisation that is a leader in the global campaign for cancelling the debt of poor countries.
A country with nearly 300 million people has a debt almost as great as the entire developing world, which is home to five billion people, she said.
The difference, explained Pettifor, is that the average annual interest on U.S. debt is three percent, while the average interest for developing countries is 18 percent.
On the eve of International Migrants Day, Dec. 18, and given these figures and the international reality, it can be argued that the only way to stop the waves of migration towards the North is to promote development in the South.
And this can be achieved with the help of the 0.7 percent GDP development aid and the democratisation of the multilateral financial system. (END/Copyright IPS)
