By IPS Correspondents
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 21 2003 (IPS)

Argentina’s law on immigration, which dates back to the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, allows authorities to detain and deport foreign nationals without providing any specific reasons and without any intervention by the judiciary.

”The deportation policy followed by the National Migration Office (DNM) is part of the day-to-day reality of many poor immigrants,” states a report by the Institute of Research and Studies of the city of Buenos Aires Office of the People’s Defender.

Human rights advocates complain that the National Law on Migration, which was passed in 1981, and the procedures based on that legislation give rise to arbitrary and discriminatory situations in Latin America’s third-largest economy, which prior to the current economic crisis drew millions of immigrants seeking a better life.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from other Latin American countries flocked to Argentina in the 1990s, attracted by the chance of employment that would enable them to send money home to their families, at a time when this Southern Cone country enjoyed economic stability due to a currency board that fixed the peso to the dollar.

Although there is no official data on the number of immigrants living in this once-rich country of 37 million, experts estimate that the total lies around 4.5 to 5.0 million, most of whom reside in the greater Buenos Aires, a city of roughly 12 million.

The immigrants, mainly Bolivians, Peruvians, Paraguayans, Chileans and Uruguayans, joined large communities of people from their own countries who had come to Argentina in previous decades.

In the second half of the 1990s, this country also received immigration flows from eastern Europe, as well as Asia – mainly South Korea and China – as a result of the immigration policies put in place in 1994 by former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

The procedures followed by the DNM have come under constant fire from the Office of the People’s Defender and local human rights groups like the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS).

In recent years, the number of complaints about deportations filed with the Office of the People’s Defender has climbed, and since 1995 CELS has included a chapter on immigrants in its ”Annual Report on Human Rights”.

At the heart of the problem are national policies that not only allow, but even encourage, immigration, at the same time that they make it difficult or impossible for undocumented immigrants to regularise their situation.

For example, applications to the DNM for residency permits cost around 60 dollars – an amount that most low-income immigrants cannot possibly afford.

A study of applications to the DNM for legal residency status found serious irregularities on the part of authorities in a number of cases, according to the latest annual report by CELS.

”These anomalies end, in some cases, in a decision to deport,” which ”exposes the immigrant to arrest on orders by the DNM, with no judicial intervention or oversight whatsoever,” the human rights group added.

Undocumented immigrants are not entitled to the special national identity card that foreign nationals must show to all public employees, including those in hospitals and schools, in order to receive medical treatment, enroll their children, or gain access to other public services.

Civil servants are also required to inform migration authorities of the personal data and home address of any foreigners who fail to demonstrate that they are legal residents.

The lack of a national identity card thus ”becomes a source of denial of civil identity,” stated the CELS report.

The Office of the People’s Defender noted that immigrants face the risk of being deported when they receive treatment in hospitals, register the births of their children, enroll them in school, ”or due to the constant police harassment when they are working in the informal economy (as street vendors, for instance) or are merely walking down the street.”

CELS and the Office of the People’s Defender argue that blocking undocumented immigrants’ access to education and health care violates the constitutional guarantee that all foreigners enjoy the same civil rights as citizens.

The DNM has deported foreign parents of Argentinean children, who are legally entitled to live and work in Argentina. It has also refused disabled or ill immigrants permission to enter the country, or ordered their deportation.

Although the National Law on Migration was amended in 1994 to allow disabled or sick people to take up residence in Argentina, ”in many cases the DNM continues applying the previous legal regimen,” according to CELS.

The human rights group’s report cited the cases of two young immigrants living with HIV, the AIDS virus, who were denied access to education and medicine by the Health Ministry, even though both women had Argentinean children, which gave them the right to reside legally in this country.

After the two women took legal action, the Health Ministry provided them with the antiretroviral drugs needed to delay the onset of full-blown AIDS, ”on humanitarian grounds.” One of the women died in February 2002 at the age of 23, leaving her one-year- old daughter, whose father had already died of AIDS, an orphan.

In 2001, during a session in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament, the current Tourism Secretary Daniel Scioli said today’s immigrants were not like the Italians and Spanish who poured into the country in the first half of the 20th century.

Scioli said Buenos Aires today was overrun by ”droves of delinquents, droves of sick people who come to fill up our hospitals, and criminals who come to illegally occupy houses as squatters and work as prostitutes.”

That same year, Judge Silvia Ramond said in an interview that ”in the villas (slums), the Peruvian runs the cocaine trafficking trade, while the Paraguayan manages the trade in marijuana.” She added that ”Paraguayans are a bit violent, prone to bloody fights with knives.”

CELS underlined that at the time Ramond made those remarks, she was chair of the MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market trade bloc) commission of the Association of Magistrates and Functionaries of the National Justice system.

The worst case of aggression against immigrants was that of a young Bolivian woman and her son who were killed in 2001 when they were shoved out of a moving train.

The legal system is still investigating the possible criminal responsibility of passengers in the train, one of whom had insulted the woman because of her origin and complained about the presence of foreigners in the country after she accidentally bumped into him with her bag.

The DNM’s migration policies and procedures contribute to the precarious social and economic situation of immigrants, especially in the context of Argentina’s severe economic crisis, and increase the likelihood of abuse and mistreatment by institutions and employers.

According to Federal Police statistics, in the Buenos Aires neighbourhoods that are home to large communities of Peruvians and Bolivians, up to 600 people a month are arrested and held for anywhere between several hours and 15 days without legal or consular assistance.

”The detention centres for deportees and police stations where they are held, and the abuses and humiliations to which they are subjected, violently deprive these people of their civil rights, without providing solutions to the situation of illegality” that the government is supposedly trying to combat, according to the Office of the People’s Defender.

Excerpt: