POPULATION: Wealthy Nations Close Doors on Immigrants – Study

By Haider Rizvi Reprint | | Print |

Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 2002 (IPS) - While they still look to recruit professionals from abroad, most wealthy nations are closing their doors on unskilled workers fleeing poor countries, says a new United Nations study on international migration.

While they still look to recruit professionals from abroad, most wealthy nations are closing their doors on unskilled workers fleeing poor countries, says a study on international migration released here.

The study shows that most governments in the West – including Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria and France – are increasingly inclined to adopt a policy of restraint on immigration as a result of growing concern with its economic, social, cultural and political consequences.

“For some countries such as Canada and France, immigration is an investment,” Joseph Chamie, director of the U.N. population division, told a news conference here Tuesday. “But it’s a double message that says: ‘certain kinds are welcome, others are not’.”

With about 175 million people currently living in a country other than where they were born, the number of migrants in the world has more than doubled in the past three decades.

Europe and Northern America remain the favourite destinations for immigrants from Asia, Latin America and Africa. Currently, more than 100 million immigrants live in the two continents.

Chamie said the U.N. decided to release the information – in the form of a wall chart – because as international migration has been thrust to the forefront of the international agenda, the need for accurate, timely and comparable information and analysis on migration levels, trends, and analyses have acquired “unprecedented urgency”.

But available information and analysis have failed to keep pace with that demand, he added.

Recently, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said it was time to take a more comprehensive look at the various dimensions of the migration issue. “We need to understand better the causes of international flows of people and their complex interrelationship with development,” Annan said.

Last year, many countries viewed their immigration levels as “too high”, Chamie said, developing nations as well as developed ones. Forty-four percent of developed countries adopted policies that aimed to lower immigration levels, as did 39 percent of developing countries.

Canada and the United States are exceptions among developed countries, having maintained immigration levels, he added.

During 1995-2000, the rich regions of the world received over 11 million people from poor countries. The chart shows Canada and the United States together accepting more than five million immigrants in the past seven years.

The chart includes information on the flow of refugees, but demographers said they had no way to gather reliable information about undocumented immigrants.

Documented or not, the immigrants in the developed world help boost the economy of their homes countries. According to the study, in 2000 remittances from abroad augmented gross domestic product (GDP) by more than 10 percent in El Salvador, Eritrea, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Yemen.

According to the chart, two years ago nearly 16 million people had taken refuge in other countries. Three million of them are now based in developed countries, while Asia has the largest refugee population – more than nine million.

In recent years, trafficking in human beings and the crime’s link to transnational organised crime have posed new challenges to migration management, said U.N. researchers.

Two international treaties, the U.N. Protocol to Prevent Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children and the Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants reaffirm that “migration itself is not a crime, and that migrants may be victims in need of protection”.