POPULATION-LATAM: Mercosur’s Social Integration Begins

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 11 2002 (IPS) - The newly-agreed free circulation of persons throughout South America’s Southern Cone will extend the region’s integration process – so far limited to trade – into the social and labour spheres.

The Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market) Summit is expected to formalise the Residency Agreement for Nationals of the States Party, Dec 6-7 in Brasilia.

The initiative was approved Friday by the ministers of Justice and Interior of Mercosur’s full members, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and of the bloc’s associate members Bolivia and Chile.

The agreement will allow the citizens of the six countries to obtain permanent residence in any other, requiring documents proving the interested party’s nationality and the lack of a criminal record.

In other words, it opens the door to legalise the status of hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants throughout the Southern Cone.

Once legal residence is established, immigrants covered by the agreement – meaning they are citizens of one of the six countries involved – will have the same civil and labour rights as the citizens in the country where they choose to live.

Opening the region’s borders to movement by humans, and not just to merchandise and capital, is a long-time demand of labour organisations and immigrant assistance groups, which have criticised the agreements that are exclusively dedicated to trade.

But the free circulation of persons in a community of nations requires more than mechanisms to establish foreigners’ residency status, says Valdir Vicente Barros, finance secretary for the General Confederation of Brazilian Workers and member of Mercosur’s Economic and Social Consultative Forum.

It is also necessary to make citizens’ rights equal in the different countries of the Southern Cone to ensure effective freedom of movement and to prevent imbalances, Barros said in a conversation with IPS.

Harmonising and standardising labour and social security legislation is a basic requisite for achieving free circulation, says Silvia Portela, foreign relations adviser for CUT, Brazil’s largest labour union.

And that is a task that will require several years to complete, said Portela, given the differences in the laws of the six countries involved in the project.

Brazil, for example, has a social security system that is quite different than that of its partners, and has only adopted 30 percent of the clauses of a protocol for social security cooperation already approved by Mercosur, noted the expert.

The labour unionists, meeting in Sao Paulo late last week to draw up their proposals for next month’s Mercosur Summit, were caught off guard by the Justice and Interior ministers’ green light of the Residency Agreement.

The subgroup of Mercosur’s work group 10, specialising in labour issues, was slated to discuss the matter, but has not met since the first half of this year due to the "paralysis" of the bloc, caused by economic crisis, said Portela.

It would be "very complicated" to implement free circulation throughout Mercosur, and efforts will face resistance from several professional sectors, commented sociologist Joao Paulo Veiga, of the Sao Paulo-based Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.

Brazilian attorneys, for example, will not want to allow foreign competitors for at least a decade, predicts Veiga.

Pedro Giménez, president of the Paraguay’s CUT labour union, said his country’s Congress "tends to oppose any agreement" signed by the government.

The Paraguayan Chamber of Deputies passed a bill to prohibit foreigners from owning land near the border. The proposed law has yet to be approved by the Senate, but it poses a threat to the 380,000 Brazilians living in Paraguay, a good portion of whom are landowners.

The legalisation of those immigrants in Paraguay, known there as "Braziguayans", is one objective of the Residency Agreement that favours Brazil.

But the initiative supported by the Mercosur ministers "is of interest to everyone," given that the six nations involved all have emigrants who are undocumented in the neighbouring countries, said Roman Catholic priest Luiz Bassegio, coordinator of the Immigrant Pastoral Service, of the Catholic Church of Sao Paulo.

Brazil’s Justice minister, Paulo de Tarso Ribeiro, pointed out that a person who is not a legal immigrant often suffers discrimination and is relegated to the least-wanted jobs, and even forced into slave-like situations.

Bassegio and Ribeiro, despite disagreement on other immigrant- related issues, do agree that legalising undocumented immigrants and establishing freedom of movement within greater Mercosur will prove beneficial for all, will reinstate the dignity of a significant portion of the population and will foment regional integration.

The moment seems appropriate for enacting an initiative that civil society groups have been demanding for many years.

The economic crisis afflicting the Southern Cone has eliminated government resistance. Argentina, for example, had opposed free transit throughout the last decade, when its own currency was strong and its economic growth was attracting a flood of immigrants, both legal and undocumented, noted sociologist Veiga.

The inclusion of labour in the integration process represents an important stride forward for the Southern Cone and will reinforce the cohesion necessary to take on the United States in the negotiations to set up the Free Trade Area of the Americas, said the expert.

POPULATION-LATAM: Mercosur’s Social Integration Begins

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 11 2002 (IPS) - The newly-agreed free circulation of persons throughout South America’s Southern Cone will extend the region’s integration process — so far limited to trade — into the social and labour spheres.
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