City of Rabat, Morocco. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
NADOR, RABAT and CASABLANCA, Morocco, Jan 6 2017 (IPS)

With a stable economy and a peaceful political climate, Morocco – which has always been a transit country for migrants — is becoming a potential new destination for settlement. The elusive dream for most of those who cross the Sahara, though, is still Europe.

No more than 15 kilometers separate the Spanish enclave Melilla and the Moroccan coastal city of Nador, in the northeastern Rif region. This tiny Spanish town of 70,000 people became a major crossing point for those seeking to reach asylum in Europe."The image of living in Europe is changing and some of them prefer to stay in Morocco as long as they can access rights. It’s not a super-developed country, but neither is it a super-poor country." --Miguel Hernandez Garcia

Melilla, together with Ceuta, are the remaining Spanish territories on the African continent and the European Union’s only land border. Precisely for that reason, many Sub-Saharan Africans and increasing number of Syrians dream of reaching the other side as a promised land and better life.

Both cities erected fortified borders as the pressure from migrants increased. Every year, hundreds of Sub-Saharans (many of those undocumented in Morocco) endeavor to cross the fences or embark on the perilous journey by boat across the Mediterranean.

Last month, rescue ships saved around 60 migrants who were adrift not far from Melilla. In early December 2016, at least 400 people broke through the border fence of Ceuta. On Jan. 1, another wave of 1,100 African migrants attempted to storm the same fence.

Mohamed Diaradsouba, 24, risked his life after he decided to depart Ivory Coast. He traveled almost 5,000 kms from Abidjan to Nador, passing through Mali and Algeria. He left his wife and one-year-old son with the hope of one day coming back.

“Where I lived there was no employment, I couldn’t get money to survive. I came to Morocco because I want to cross to Spain. But here there is no job either. I’m sure I’ll find a job in Spain, France, Belgium or Germany and make my living,” he told IPS.

He and a group of four companions rely on small donations provided by activists and the Catholic Church in Nador. Undocumented migrants are not tolerated by local police, who frequently conduct street sweeps and arrest those without legal papers.

When IPS talked to Diaradsouba on a cold November night, he was living in a rural community called Khamis-akdim, a 15-minute drive from Nador. It had been three months since he and some 300 other people Sub-Saharans Africa had set up a makeshift camp in the surrounding forest due to fear of entering the city.

Campsite where Sub-Saharan migrants live near Nador, Morocco. Credit: Mohamed Diaradsouba

“We’re camping in the bushes up on a hill. Life here is not easy. We have to walk every day to fetch water and food. We sleep in plastic tents, so when it rains everything gets wet. I didn’t bring any suitcase with me, I’m only wearing my clothes. We’re afraid of the police, they don’t know what human rights are, I’d better stay in the forest,” he said, noting that other nationalities like Cameroonians, Guineans and Malians share the same campsite.

The Ivorian migrant did not have any legal papers, refugee card or asylum seeker certificate of any kind. He is among the thousands of invisible undocumented foreigners in Morocco who are not recognized by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or the Moroccan government.

“It’s difficult to get a paper or a residency permit. I’d have to travel to the capital Rabat (10 hours by train) to make a request. I’m waiting for my luck, one day it will come,” he said.

Diaradsouba had no idea how long he would have to wait to attempt his crossing to Europe. He was still unsure whether he would risk getting through the fences to Melilla, hide himself in the backseat of a car or go by boat. “There’s no fixed price to pay for a boat. We try to gather [funds] among 30 or 40 people. Everything will depend on how much money we’ll have to pay.”

Aziz Kattouf, an activist with the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), confirms that those people camping on the forest live in terrible conditions, but he says at least they are in a “safer place” than Nador.

“They’re far from the police’s eyes. They don’t want to stay, their only hope is to cross,” he told IPS, adding that there are other four large camps in the forest where undocumented people have erected tents.

Every two or three weeks, the police raid the camps. “They apprehend men and sometimes children, destroy their tents and take their phones. Many are sent by buses to further areas in the south of Morocco. But they always come back to the camps,” said the activist.

Living alongside the foreigners altered the daily life of residents of Khamis-akdim, but there has not been a case of mistreatment or racism against them. In fact, the local Berber farmers have shown solidarity, said Alwali Abdilhate, a Tamazight speaker.

“We have good relations with the people who are camping. Early in the morning, they go to the streams or waterholes to wash their clothes and buy food in our local market. There’s a bar that allows them to recharge their cell phones,” said Abdilhate, whose family home is located right by the path migrants take to reach the camping area.

A few weeks after the initial interview, Diaradsouba contacted IPS to say he had managed to reach Spain by boat entering through Almeria. He had to pay 2,500 euros to embark on the 12-hour sea journey.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), between January and December 2016, 8,162 migrants arrived by sea in Spain, while 69 people died attempting the crossing.

The majority of migrants in Morocco are Sub-Saharan male adults between 18 and 59 years old, says Miguel Hernandez Garcia, coordinator of a program run by the Association Droit et Justice that provides legal assistance for refugees and asylum seekers.

“There are different reasons for leaving their countries, threats of physical violence or political reasons. Some are in touch with members of their communities who have reached Europe and say living conditions aren’t what they used to be in the past. The image of living in Europe is changing and some of them prefer to stay in Morocco as long as they can access rights. It’s not a super-developed country, but neither is it a super poor country,” Garcia told IPS.

Morocco became the first Arab country to develop a policy that offers undocumented migrants the chance to gain permanent residency. In 2013, the King of Morocco Mohammed VI gave momentum to a new policy on migration after receiving recommendations from the National Council for Human Rights.

“Morocco ratified international conventions and needed to implement policies. It wanted to show a good image to the world as a welcoming country. It was a clever idea to put out this strategy to the international community as an open mind State with humanitarian will. Besides, it’s also a good thing for the economy,” said Garcia.

During a full one-year campaign for regularization, more than 90 percent of the 27,000 migrants who applied were documented. The government is now discussing in Parliament a raft of related legislation – the first law approved on the scope of the new policy was against human trafficking. A second law that still pending is about asylum.

“It’s basically to guarantee the access to rights for migrants. It’s only three years now that this policy is running and still no official body is in charge of it,” Garcia added.

Jean–Paul Cavalieri, the UNHCR representative in Morocco, said the first challenge is to finalise the law on asylum and extend medical benefits to refugees and regular migrants.

“Another challenge has to do with the territorialization of the policy, how you implement the policy on the ground in remote areas. The migrants are spread out across the country. That could be a model for [other] countries in the region. What we want is that refugees are able to find asylum and a protected space. It’s just the beginning, the policies are being developed, but it has to expand and be implemented.”

Pedro sought a safer life. He traveled to Somerville from Chalantenango, El Salvador on foot, by bus, car, and in the back of a tractor-trailer truck.

Now he’s one of 60 new students from Central America who have enrolled in Somerville Public Schools after making it to the Texas border on their own or with other children, part of a wave of 70,000 youth who crossed the border earlier this year. And the district is concentrating on when those students are going, not where they’ve been.“Whatever student comes to our district will bring strengths and will add to our diverse community and we want them here. We want to give them that message." -- Sarah Davila

“As soon as the student comes to Somerville, they are our students, period, and we don’t need to know, and we’re not interested in knowing about their residency status,” said Sarah Davila, the schools’ District Administrator of Programs, English Learner Education and Family and Community Partnerships.“We want them to be successful.”

Pedro – who, like other students in this article, is not being identified by his real name – had a perilous journey. He has a gash wound in his arm from an injury he got on the way. He ended up in a cell in Texas and then was bounced to an immigrant holding center in Florida before being reunited with his father, who works as a cook in Cambridge.

By the time he got to Somerville, he had a lung infection that landed him in the hospital.

But the hazards of his hometown justified the risky journey, he said.

“It’s really dangerous there,” Pedro said. “There are thugs who don’t leave you in peace.”

Maria, 15, lived with her grandparents, also in Chalantenango. She never remembers meeting her parents before arriving in Somerville.

“I told my parents that, since I was turning 15, I needed to be with them,” she said. “Living with your grandparents is not the same as living with your parents.”

Miguel, 16, came from San Vincente, El Salvador. Back home he lived with an aunt. His mother works for a local bakery here. Miguel said he had been harassed but never hurt by the local toughs. However, one of his friends was regularly ransomed, Miguel said, because he wore nice clothing. Local gang members assumed he had money. They demanded higher and higher payments. Then one day, the friend’s cousin disappeared.

“He suspected that the gang was responsible,” Miguel said. “So he and his family started to save up money and now he lives up here.”

Almost 70,000 young people, mostly from Central America, were apprehended at the U.S. border during fiscal year 2014 (Oct. 1, 2013-Sep. 30, 2014), up 77 percent from a year earlier, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Most of them come from Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala.

Young migrants from those and all non-contiguous countries have the right to apply for asylum once they arrive. If their application is accepted, they get a court date and are then sent to a shelter or to the home of a family member, if one can be identified.

Those three countries are among the most dangerous in the world, according to 2012 United Nations statistics. Honduras had the world’s highest per-capita homicide rate in 2012: 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. El Salvador came in fourth, with 41.2 homicides per 100,000, and Guatemala was fifth, with a rate of 39.9 homicides per 100,000 people.

Adapting to the classroom

The youth who make it to the border and arrive in Somerville face tough odds, according to school counselors and teachers, but the district is ready to take them in. All children in Massachusetts have the right to free public education, regardless of immigrant status or national origin.

All children in Massachusetts have the right to a free public education, regardless of immigration status or national origin. Somerville takes that right seriously, said Sarah Davila, District Administrator of Programs, English Learner Education and Family and Community Partnerships for the Somerville Public Schools.

“Unaccompanied youth is a particular profile,” Davila added. “They come with particular needs and we need to respond to their needs.

“Whatever student comes to our district will bring strengths and will add to our diverse community and we want them here. We want to give them that message,” she said.

The Somerville Public School system calculates that about 60 new students will arrive each school year, but this year the numbers will be much higher. While some students who crossed the border enrolled during the previous school year, in just the first two months of this academic year 48 new students – some unaccompanied minors, others who came to the community with their families – have enrolled, Davila reported. Some of them are high school age but have only a third or fourth grade level.

“Knowing that we have an increase in beginner students…  we’ve shifted our cluster of courses,” Davila said.

Even beginning students take all their courses in English, but now there are more entry-level math and sciences courses. In addition to regular courses, all English language learners take English as a Second Language, many of them from Sarah Sandager.

On a recent morning, a classroom of ninth graders chanted, “Today is October 28, 2014!” before getting back their corrected homework – vocabulary worksheets. Sandager moved up and down the rows, cajoling one student to do a re-write, praising another.

“They have so many challenges,” Sandager explained in an interview. Some have left behind parents or siblings, others have to work 40 hours a week, she said.

“You’re dealing with more than just them learning a language. You have to think about their whole self. The social and emotional component,” she said.

Pedro misses his mother but talks to her on the telephone every day. His dream is to graduate and get a good job “so my family and I can live a better life.”

In the meantime, he hopes the Somerville community will make an effort to understand the immigrant wave from Central America.

“I hope they… look how things are in our countries,” Pedro said. “I just ask people to understand us and give us a little support that we might need and that they don’t discriminate against us.”

A version of this story appeared in the Somerville Journal and Somerville Neighborhood News.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Every year, 65,000 undocumented youth like this star soccer player graduate from U.S. high schools. Brought to the country as children, and with immigration reform stalled in Washington, they are caught in limbo. Credit: Marcelo Brociner/IPS

By Jane Regan
SOMERVILLE, Massachusetts, May 6 2014 (IPS)

He did everything right. Worked hard. Excelled in school. Captain of his soccer team. He’s been scouted by a half-dozen colleges and universities.

“I had six goals and I had about 28 assists. My team went to the state finals,” the quiet 18-year-old explained.“I wish more people saw what it’s like to see students who have worked so hard… and then slowly they realise that not a lot of doors are open." -- Anne Herzberg

But this star soccer player from Somerville High School isn’t necessarily headed to college. He doesn’t qualify for most grants or loans. He can’t even get the lower “in-state tuition” guaranteed for state residents at public institutions like the University of Massachusetts, a savings of 13,000 dollars per year.

The soccer player is undocumented.

“I’m not going to lie. I go to bed every night thinking about it,” he said. (His identity is being withheld to protect him and his family.)

“Sometimes my mom sees my crying and she asks why, but I don’t like talking about it. I don’t want to hurt my parents who have been working so hard.”

Every year, 65,000 undocumented youth like the soccer player graduate from U.S. high schools. Brought to the country as children, and with immigration reform stalled in Washington, they are caught in limbo.

Probably a dozen and perhaps even several dozen of the seniors at the public high school are undocumented in this city of 77,000, where one-third of the households speak a language other than English at home, and where some two-thirds of the student body is characterised as “minority.”

Because U.S. laws guarantee all children an education and prohibit school officials from asking children about their status, nobody knows exactly how many are undocumented. An estimated 11 million undocumented people currently live in the U.S.

School counselor Anne Herzberg, who helps students with college applications, sees far too many of them come through her doorway.

“One of the hardest things I see every year is kids who have done everything right in high school… [but] because of their status here they are unable to find a place that will accept them and give them the financial support that they need to be able to attend a four-year college,” she told IPS.

A four-year college or university in the U.S. can cost up to 60,000 dollars per year, including room and board, at private institutions. State schools cost about 15,000 to 23,000 dollars, with room and board, if a student qualifies for in-state tuition.

Some undocumented youth have options. Sixteen of the 50 US states offer in-state tuition rates to undocumented residents. But Massachusetts is not one of them.

Another option is the stopgap programme called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. Instituted in 2012 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, it gives undocumented young people temporary working papers and the ability to qualify for in-state tuition and a few other programmes.

Youth must have arrived in the U.S. by Jun. 15, 2007, and be under the age of 31 as of Jun. 15, 2012. The fee is 465 dollars, and the DACA card is only good for two years. Renewal costs another 465 dollars.

As of the end of 2013, a total of 610,694 people had received DACA status nationwide, 5,232 in Massachusetts, according to Homeland Security.

“Somerville does have a large number of students that do qualify for DACA,” Herzberg said, noting that she was aware of 10 current students who applied.

But, she added, “It is expensive.“ And, “for the students that I work with, the vast majority actually came after 2007.”

Like the soccer player.

“I arrived in the U.S. on Jan. 27, 2009,” he said. “I was two years late.”

“I wish more people saw what it’s like to see students who have worked so hard… and then slowly they realise that not a lot of doors are open,” Herzberg noted. “As an immigrant myself and as a counselor, it’s hard for me to not to believe in the ‘American dream’ – that students can be here and be successful and work hard and achieve.”

Back in 2001, legislators proposed a stopgap measure: the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors or DREAM Act. It was reintroduced in 2009. If passed, DREAM Act beneficiaries would get a shot at legal status if they attended college or served in the armed forces for at least two years. Afterwards, they would have a five-year waiting period before applying for Permanent Residence.

Between 800,000 and two million youth are eligible for the DREAM Act (depending on the calculations), some 27,000 in Massachusetts, according to the Center for American Progress’ count. The think tank calculates that passage of the law would add “$329 billion to the U.S. economy and create 1.4 million new jobs by 2030.”

But like other immigration legislation, the DREAM Act is stuck in the legislative deadlock that characterises what is probably the least efficient Congress in history.

Congressman Michael E. Capuano, a Democrat from Massachusetts, supports the DREAM Act “as a bridge to where we really want to be,” which is comprehensive immigration reform.

The congressman, who is of Italian and Irish descent, deplores the fact that so many young people are being held “hostage.”

Congressman Michael E. Capuano (D-MA) points to his Italian grandfather’s U.S. citizenship papers from 1922. His grandfather, who came to the U.S. as an orphan at the age of 18, was 37 years old. Credit: Jane Regan/IPS

“Look, you can make an argument every day of the week about adults who may have come here illegally or usually stayed here illegally. I just don’t think it’s a valid part of the discussion to include children who really didn’t choose their lives,” he said. “They’re pending in limbo and I think… we’re wasting their future. I think it’s a terrible tragedy.”

“Immigrants are here for the same reason my families came here,” Capuano continued. “To make their lives better and to make their children’s’ lives better.”

School counselor Herzberg said she encourages her undocumented students not to give up.

“My advice to undocumented students who want to attend college is: ‘You can attend college and you need to fight for it,’” she said. “’Get involved in different organisations that fight for the rights of immigrants… The more that they do, the more chances that things will change for the better, whereas just sitting back is not going to change minds.”

The soccer player doesn’t know what he is going to do. If he and his family can scrape together the money, he may attend community college. Or he may head back to Brazil.

“I think good things happen to good people and I worked hard for myself, my success and my future,” he said. “I still have hope. Hope is the last thing that dies.”

Additional reporting by high school journalist Marcelo Brociner.

Demonstrators with torches and placards reading “No more deaths on the borders” in Malaga on Feb. 12, to call for an investigation into the deaths of 15 immigrants six days earlier in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in northern Africa. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MALAGA, Spain, Mar 10 2014 (IPS)

“Who will speak for them now? Who will tell their stories to their families in Cameroon or Ivory Coast?” asked Edmund Okeke, a Nigerian, about the 15 migrants who died while trying to swim to the shore of the Spanish city of Ceuta from Morocco.

The victims were driven back with rubber bullets fired by the Spanish Guardia Civil (militarised police) from the beach of this Spanish enclave in north Africa, on Feb. 6.“The nights were terrible. The waves were like mountains." -- Gora Ndiaye

“These are people living in unbearable conditions of poverty and who are seeking a better life. Why else would they want to leave their country and embark on such a long and dangerous journey?” said Okeke, the president of the Palma-Palmilla Immigrants Association in the southern Spanish city of Malaga.

Okeke has lived here for 14 years and he believes that the actions of the Spanish border authorities “cannot be justified.”

That is why, he told IPS, he is calling on the government of rightwing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for a “proper” investigation and the prosecution and trial of “those responsible for giving the order to fire” on people “who were neither aggressive, nor represented a danger to anyone.”

The 15 migrants drowned when dozens jumped into the sea to try to reach Ceuta by swimming around the breakwater separating Moroccan and Spanish waters.

The Interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, admitted on Feb. 13 when he appeared before parliament that the authorities had fired rubber bullets and tear gas from the land to the water.

“But not at the people,” he emphasised in his description of the facts being investigated by the attorney general’s office, following a complaint lodged by a score of non-governmental organisations.

Fernández Díaz visited Ceuta and Melilla, the other autonomous Spanish city in northern Africa, on Mar. 5 and 6. There he announced that the fences separating the enclaves from Morocco would be reinforced with special wire mesh to make them even harder for immigrants to scale.

Every year thousands of Africans, mostly from the sub-Saharan region, try to get into the European Union by climbing the three rows of fences lined with razor wire that separate Moroccan territory from Ceuta and Melilla, or by crossing the border in small boats from Morocco or their home countries.

But swimming across was an even more desperate option.

Tina Adrasubi, a 34-year-old Nigerian, left her home in Benin 13 years ago to come to Spain in order to help her family.

“I went to Mali by car with a friend, and then on foot to Morocco to cross to Ceuta,” she told IPS, rocking her two-month-old daughter, Gloria. Many sub-Saharan Africans take years to reach Morocco.

Each of the young men who drowned has his own story, and perhaps a mother who is waiting for a phone call that never comes, but “it seems that does not matter at all when you are poor,” complained Okeke to IPS.

The five bodies recovered on the Spanish side of the border fence lie in anonymous graves in a Ceutan graveyard. The others were taken to Moroccan morgues.

The governing People’s Party rejected a move in Congress to open a commission of enquiry into the tragedy.

Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Home Affairs, suggested in a letter to minister Fernández Díaz that “the rubber bullets could have provoked panic among the group of immigrants” attempting to swim ashore, contributing to the deaths.

Some 80,000 immigrants, 40,000 in Morocco and another 40,000 in Mauritania, are waiting their chance to enter the EU through Ceuta and Melilla, the minister said on Mar. 4, according to figures provided by Morocco and corroborated by his office.

Union leader Gerardo Cova, who between 2001 and 2007 was head of the Information Centre for Foreign Workers in the resort of Marbella, told IPS: “the government wants to create social alarm and is criminalising immigrants in order to justify its actions and make cutbacks on foreigners’ rights.”

In 2013, a total of about 100,000 immigrants were intercepted trying to cross maritime and land borders into the 28 member countries of the EU.

Spain is the fourth most frequent route of irregular entry, according to the December 2013 figures from the European Agency for the Management of External Borders (Frontex), quoted by its assistant director, Gil Arias.

“Instead of rescuing them, they were treated like animals,” Christiana Nwokeji, the president of the Malaga Union of Nigerian Women, complained to IPS in her home.

While she was talking, a video on the television showed several survivors who managed to swim to shore in Ceuta, only to be immediately sent back to Morocco.

Nwokeji remarked that Spaniards, too, are emigrating because of the extremely high unemployment rate, due to the economic crisis and the new regulations that make it easier to fire workers. “Everyone in the world emigrates when they face a lack of opportunities,” she said.

“I was born in a crisis. We have always lived in crises,” Gora Ndiaye, a 28-year-old Senegalese man, told IPS. He said he felt “very afraid and very cold” in the small boat in which he and 45 of his fellow countrymen spent a week, travelling from Dakar to the Spanish municipality of Hoya Fría on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands.

Ndiaye, who has a wife and a six-month-old son in Senegal, said “people here have to help Africa,” and he justified migration “because we have no food, we must send money to our families. We cannot live on nothing.”

“The nights were terrible. The waves were like mountains. I felt stabbing pains in my arms and legs,” said Ndiaye, who cannot swim, and who paid about 500 euros (693 dollars) for the crossing in a flimsy boat. “I am lucky to have lived to tell the tale,” he said.

According to Balance Migratorio en la Frontera Sur de 2013” (Migration Balance on the Southern Border 2013), a report presented in February by the Andalusian Human Rights Association (APDHA), 7,550 immigrants were intercepted reaching Spain by boat or through Ceuta and Melilla.

The number of people who died or disappeared in the attempt were 130 in 2013.

The study reported that 45.25 percent of African immigrants, over half of them from sub-Saharan Africa, arrived in boats and 27.4 percent on inflatable rafts. Some 15.75 percent scaled the fences at Ceuta and Melilla.

On Feb. 28, 200 immigrants climbed the fences at Melilla and their celebration of their arrival with hugs and laughter was shown on television.

Yvette Edere, from Ivory Coast, told IPS she felt “very sad” about what happened in Ceuta, and said she “had to struggle very hard” to get legal residence in Spain, where she arrived with a visa 20 years ago.

“Many white people from Europe and the United States come to Africa,” said Okeke. He is presently helping some Spaniards who want to go to work in Nigeria.

“They exploit its gold and its oil, and no one fires on them. There are no barriers or documents required. They are treated like kings,” he concluded.

Saudi authorities rounded up more than 4,000 illegal foreign workers at the start of a nationwide crackdown ultimately aimed at creating more jobs for locals, media reported on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of workers have already left the kingdom following a grace period of seven months during which authorities told expatriates that if they did not fix their legal status they had to leave the country or face jail.

Many workers stayed off the streets to avoid checkpoints looking for invalid labour papers as a special task force of 1,200 Labour Ministry officials combed shops, construction sites, restaurants and businesses. Police manned roadblocks to enforce the kingdom’s strict labour rules that make it virtually impossible to remain in the country without an official employee-sponsor.

The campaign reflects a wider drive to trim reliance on foreign workers across the Gulf Arab states, whose rulers fear the changing demographics of the region. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries have aggressively supported proposals to open more jobs for their own citizens, worrying that chronic unemployment could feed dissent and challenges to their power.

“We want more Saudi men and women to work in the private and public sectors,” Saudi Deputy Labour Minister Mufrej Al-Haqbani told reporters Sunday just before the end of an “amnesty” period for the estimated 1.5 million foreigners — about 16 percent of the total nine million non-Saudi work force — who are believed to have violated residency and labour rules by leaving their sponsors, sneaking into the country or simply staying after making the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Workers had until Monday to comply with the law or face arrest and deportation.

A petition in support of a Saudi woman’s right to drive has attracted more than 16,500 names in advance of a weekend campaign in which female motorists are expected to defy the kingdom’s rulers and take to the roads

While some Gulf countries have plentiful oil and gas resources to lavish on relatively small local populations — foreigners outnumber natives about 5-to-1 in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — the pressures on Saudi Arabia stand out. Its 27 million people are more than the populations of all the other Gulf states combined, and its vast oil wealth has not trickled down enough to prevent impoverished areas and slums.

Unlike other places in the Gulf, low-income Saudis are willing to work the types of jobs that have long been held by Indian, Egyptian, Pakistani and Filipino migrant workers, though perhaps not for the same low wages that can be the equivalent of just several hundred dollars a month. Yet unemployment among Saudi nationals has remained stuck at 10 percent for several years, according to the International Monetary Fund. Unemployment among Saudis under 30 years old — about two-thirds of the population — is about three times the national average.

Saudi Arabia promised 120 billion dollars to fund job creation, debt forgiveness, higher public sector wages and social programmes that help young Saudis buy homes, a prerequisite for marriage. It also accelerated its so-called “Saudisation” programme, which seeks to require businesses to ensure that Saudi nationals make up at least 10 percent of the workforce.

But numbers tell another story. Only one-third of the seven million new jobs created over the past decade went to Gulf nationals, according to the International Monetary Fund.

A report in the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National said at least 51 million more jobs are needed by 2020 to avoid a rise in unemployment among Arab Gulf nationals.

Rights groups attack ‘irony’ of Saudi Arabia alleging Security Council double standards as kingdom cracks down on rights.

The Saudi crackdown may whittle down the number of foreign workers, but it may fail to address deeper issues that touch all Gulf nations such as allegations of abuses of domestic help and employment rules that have been harshly criticised by rights groups.

Nearly every worker in the Gulf — from construction sites to board rooms — is directly “sponsored” by an employer who has say over exit visas, residency and work permits. Groups such as Human Rights Watch and the International Labor Organisation have accused employers of violations such as withholding workers’ passports or ignoring their demands. In May, hundreds of construction workers in the United Arab Emirates were sent back to Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries after waging a strike to protest meal costs deducted from their pay.

Any worker who leaves a sponsor without permission to find another job is considered in violation of labour rules.

“The problem on one level is that the migrants keep salary levels low,” Saudi expert and author Karen Elliott House said. “Another problem is that Saudis are either not qualified for the jobs they want or do not want to accept the low salaries of jobs they are qualified to do.”

*Posted under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Kazi Fouzia in the street where she had an accident in 2010. Her shoulder sustained multiple fractures, but the only treatment she received was painkillers as she was undocumented at the time. Credit: Silvia Romanelli/IPS

By Silvia Romanelli
NEW YORK, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

Ataur was 18 when he left Bangladesh and arrived in the United States in 1991 as an undocumented migrant. He took two jobs at the same time, earning about 35 dollars a day in total.

Vincent was smuggled into the U.S. from China in 2001. Ten years after Ataur, his working conditions were even worse. He worked in several Chinese restaurants, for 60 to 70 hours a week, six days a week, for about 300 dollars a month, an average of one dollar per hour.“When you’re late, they fire you. When you’re sick, they fire you … When you complain [about] anything, they can fire you.” -- Vincent, an undocumented worker from China

Both asked that only their first names be used.

“In New York, if you go in the street … if you ask 10 people, I’m sure at least five or six are undocumented,” Vincent told IPS, while talking in a café in New York’s Chinatown.

The U.S. is home to more than 11 million undocumented workers, and there are an estimated two million migrants working in the city of New York.

They are taxi drivers, domestic workers, restaurant, retail and construction workers. They are paid far less than the 7.25 dollars per hour that is New York’s minimum wage, and they are often mistreated by their employers.

Their lives may undergo major changes if the U.S. House of Representatives approves an immigration bill, passed by the Senate at the end of June, which offers a 13-year path to citizenship for undocumented migrants, but also reinforces border security and enables businesses to check workers’ social security numbers, under the E-verify programme.

The programme would make “every single undocumented person one click away from being notified or deported,” according to Monami Maulik, executive director of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), an organisation of low-wage South Asian immigrants in Jackson Heights, Queens, which counts 2,000 members.

“Our members… and many others in immigrant communities are really disappointed with this legislation. It’s turning out to be more and more repressive, harsher measures,” she said. “So we are following it very closely.”

After Latinos, she added, South Asians are among the second largest undocumented population in New York.

Stolen wages, mental pressure and fear

Employers tend to say, “I hire you even if you’re illegal, so you should say ‘thank you’, no matter how much I pay you,” Vincent told IPS.

Because there are so many undocumented migrants ready to work for extremely low wages, other needy workers are pressured to accept the same conditions, no matter what their immigration status and nationality are.

Ataur’s sister, Amana, arrived legally in the U.S., but was still paid less than the minimum wage for eight years.

Mental pressure at the workplace is also huge. “When you’re late, they fire you. When you’re sick, they fire you … When you complain [about] anything, they can fire you,” said Vincent.

“Employers often don’t pay workers for a week or months at a time. There has been a case of a year at a time. They’ll do things like hold people’s passports, threaten to call immigration if they ask for the wages that they earned,” Maulik told IPS.

In 2009, DRUM launched monthly “workers’ rights clinics”, to help migrant workers reclaim their stolen wages and raise awareness of their own rights.

In a phone interview, Sayma Khun, a Bangladeshi national, told IPS how she managed to recover, with the help of DRUM, 5,000 dollars of unpaid wages from her previous employer.

Similarly, in 2008, Vincent, together with other 35 co-workers, filed a lawsuit against their employer, in this case with the help of the Chinatown-based Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA).

But as soon as the lawsuit was filed, the restaurant was shut down. It re-opened some time later in a different location under a new name, a strategy widely used by Chinese employers to avoid lawsuits, according to Vincent.

“By federal law this is not supposed to happen. Even undocumented workers are protected under U.S. labour laws around minimum wage,” Maulik told IPS.

In order to launch a neighbourhood-wide investigation on workers’ rights respect, the Department of Labour needs a certain number of individual complaints. But workers often refrain from complaining because they fear employers’ retaliation and deportation.

The husband of Nadera Kashem, a Bangladeshi DRUM member, is at risk of being deported, after he was caught, last year, during a police raid in the perfume shop he worked in. Because he was undocumented, he was sent to an immigration detention centre. He’s been there for 17 months now.

In these cases, “The employer is supposed to be punished, but it always means the worker is punished,” said Maulik.

At the local level, immigration is being enforced by police officers, often accused by migrants’ rights organisations of profiling and discrimination.

“The biggest fear an undocumented person has is the local police officer, because that’s the person who’s going to stop you, ask you for identification, possibly deport you,” Maulik said.

In June, the New York City Council passed two bills of the Community Safety Act establishing accountability mechanisms for the New York Police Department (NYPD) and allowing citizens to file claims against NYPD’s misbehaviour.

Finding the courage to speak up

“We see no future, why are we still working like slaves? So that’s why I organised my co-workers, we wanted to improve the working conditions, and not just for ourselves,” Vincent told IPS.

Before joining CSWA, he said, he didn’t even know that there was a minimum wage or what “overtime” meant.

“Organising protects you, never puts you in trouble,” is what Kazi Fouzia, a Bangladeshi community organiser who joined DRUM in 2010, says to other migrant workers to encourage them to speak up.

Fouzia used to work in a retail sari shop in Jackson Heights, Queens. Her employer owned three stores; one day he asked her to go get some clothes from another shop across the street. While she was crossing, she was hit by a car and thrown 13 feet.

Fouzia’s employer didn’t allow her to call 911 because she was undocumented. She had multiple fractures in her shoulder, but she didn’t have insurance so the only medical care she received were painkillers. The next day she discovered she had been fired.

This is not only her personal story, she told IPS, “This is every undocumented worker’s story, every one.”

Many in the crowd of San Francisco May Day marchers wore butterfly wings; the Monarch butterfly migrates to Mexico and then back to the U.S. every year. Credit: Judith Scherr/IPS

By Judith Scherr
SAN FRANCISCO, California, May 2 2013 (IPS)

More than 1,000 people marched under the brilliant San Francisco sun on May Day. Their signs, such as “Work in America/Live in America/Dream in America. Immigration reform now,” their songs, chants and speeches wove together the twin themes of the day: worker justice and immigrant justice.

Alphonso Pines of the hotel and restaurant workers union Unite HERE put it this way, speaking to the crowd before the march: “We’re marching for our families; we’re marching to honour the sweat and the contributions of each and every working person. We’re marching to honour the beauty of each and every family – queer or straight, immigrant or born here. We’re marching because together we can make history.“People are getting separated from their families every day. We want a stop to that immediately." -- Kitzia Esteva of Causa Justa

“Together we can win immigration reform that includes all workers and all families. Together we can stop the pain of deportation.”

In all, there were some 85 marches calling for worker and immigrant rights around the U.S., including a march of 700 in Oakland, California, 2,000 in Los Angeles and several thousand in New York.

Seattle-based journalist Mark Taylor Canfield told IPS that unions brought large numbers of people out to a peaceful march of several thousand in Seattle. A break-off group broke windows and damaged property. Police reacted with “large amounts of pepper spray and flash-bang grenades,” he said. There were 13 arrests.

In San Francisco, Tessa Levine was getting ready to march with Mujeres Unidas. Like many in the crowd, she wore butterfly wings. The Monarch butterfly flies to Mexico then back to the U.S. every year, she said, explaining, “It’s really a symbol that migration is beautiful, that migration is natural.”

Still, migration is regulated by law. And at this point, no one knows exactly what the new immigration law will look like – or if one will actually make it through both houses of Congress and on to the president’s desk.

A number of demonstrators told IPS they had serious questions about the bill known as the Bipartisan Framework for Comprehensive Immigration Reform scheduled for consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 9.

A primary concern with the bill is the 13 years it would take most immigrants in the U.S. without documents to become citizens. The positive aspect is that, during the waiting period, they would be able to work legally. However, during that time, they would be excluded from social services, including the right to purchase health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

“We want a fast and just path to citizenship,” said Kitzia Esteva, of the advocacy organisation Causa Justa.Just Cause, noting that immigrants’ taxes pay for these services.

Emily Lee, with the Chinese Progressive Association, expressed similar concerns. Noting that one million out of the 11 million undocumented persons living in the U.S. are Asian-Pacific Islanders, she asked, “What does that mean when you’re paying back taxes, and you’re expected to contribute to the society, but you’re not receiving the benefits?”

But even getting onto the path for citizenship under the Senate bill under discussion could be impossible for people who have worked informally as day labourers or domestic workers, since the applicant is expected to show proof of having worked in the U.S.

“These are men who are working every day,” said Emiliano Bourgois-Chacon, with the San Francisco Day Labor Program and Women’s Collective. But because they are undocumented, they don’t have paperwork to prove they have been working, Bourgois-Chacon said.

Keeping the family together was another concern of May Day demonstrators.

The bill in the Senate would make it more difficult for families to sponsor siblings. “Family reunification has been a cornerstone of immigration in the U.S.,” Lee, of the Chinese Progressive Association, said. “And to start chipping away at that…is very problematic.”

Many people in the Chinese community wouldn’t otherwise have been able to come to the U.S., she added.

Deportations that rip families apart are of great concern to a number of demonstrators IPS interviewed. There have been some 800 deportations from San Francisco since 2009, with the introduction of Secure Communities or “S-Comm”, the programme where local police share arrest information with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Estava of Causa Justa.

Across the Bay in Alameda County, the Oakland-Berkeley area, there have been 2,000 deportations since 2009.

“People are getting separated from their families every day,” Estava said. “We want a stop to that immediately. We are fighting to get local police to stop the collaboration between police and ICE, and we have that same demand on the national level with immigration reform.”

Deportation has also heavily impacted the Arab immigrant community, said Lara Kiswani of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. “There’s obviously racial discrimination and systemic criminalisation of Arabs and Muslims here in the United States, which leads oftentimes to deportation,” she said.

Like Estava, Kiswani said the high number of deportations comes from collaboration between local and federal law enforcement. “There should be an end to S-Comm so that there’s more accountability to local law enforcement and so that people aren’t unjustly targeted and deported for various misdemeanors,” she said.

Another problem with the current and proposed law is the E-verify programme through which an employer can verify a person’s social security number. ICE can request an employer perform an E-verify audit.

Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees International Union Local 87, said a few years ago several hundred of her union janitors were targeted by an E-verify audit, fired, and “lost everything overnight”.

Esteva pointed to another problem with the proposed law: putting resources into enhanced law enforcement on the border.

ICE and the border patrol have the most law enforcement money in the country, Esteva said. “Instead of putting that money into border enforcement, we could see a lot more social services and resources for the community. We think that money would not be well invested in protecting the border.”

Nancy Mackowsky marched the two-mile route holding an American Federation of Teachers banner. She teaches English as a second language at San Francisco City College and said some of her students work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., then come to her class in the evening four days a week.

“They have goals, they have dreams and they deserve to be able to fulfill them,” she said.

An immigration reform rally in Long Beach, California, Mar. 29, 2013. Credit: a_auzanneau/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 18 2013 (IPS)

A long-awaited legislative proposal to reform the United States’ immigration system is sparking frustration on both the left and right here, but is widely being seen as a centrist compromise bill that will now energise all sides as debate in Congress begins Friday.

The massive overhaul plan, released Wednesday by a bipartisan group of eight senators, offers nearly 900 pages of changes. If it passes what is sure to be contentious negotiations over the coming months, any final legislation would be the first major immigration reforms in the United States since the 1980s.“A change like this would set up a comparison between a scientist and a sister, and that’s a big concern.” -- Center for Community Change's Kica Matos

Yet nestled among the new proposal is a fundamental realignment of U.S. visa policy away from a longstanding priority on family reunification and towards, instead, a model that more closely fulfils the needs of business.

Indeed, the proposal would stop offering siblings or adult children of U.S. citizens the chance to apply for family visas, though it does ease travel to the United States by other relatives. For decades, Washington has made available some 65,000 family-related visas every year, an ideological cornerstone of its immigration programme.

Under the proposed changes, on the other hand, visas for agricultural workers and high-skilled workers would be greatly increased, a key concession to the business community.

“This draft clearly damages the family-based immigration system and the longstanding principle of family unity,” Kica Matos, the director of Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice at the Center for Community Change, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS.

“A change like this would set up a comparison between a scientist and a sister, and that’s a big concern.”

In addition to immigration rights proponents, the AFL-CIO, one of the country’s largest unions and a kingmaker in the current debate, has come out strongly against the family visa changes.

In addition, the diversity visa programme – historically one of the most popular ways of emigrating to the United States, offering around 55,000 visas through an annual lottery system – is being replaced with twice as many “merit-based” visas. Eventually, this programme is aimed at rising to around 250,000 visas per year.

Some analysts suggest that such changes could have a significant effect on the demographic impact of the U.S. immigration system, perhaps greatly increasing the number of Asian immigrants into the country to the detriment of others.

“The diversity visa was historically of particular importance for people of colour, especially those from Africa,” Matos says.

“The switch away from family visas and the elimination of the diversity visa is a step in the wrong direction, introducing a far more mercantile approach. Doing so leaves these important decisions up to big corporations, rather than preserving longstanding U.S. commitments to immigration and keeping intact family unity.”

Matos is quick to note, however, that the new proposal still constitutes a “historic step towards humane policy reform”, including reforms that advocates have been emphasising for nearly two decades.

11 million

Despite widely differing approaches, the United States’ immigration system has long been seen by all sides as “broken”, due in part to its complexity, cost and contradictory aims.

Yet particularly following the recent national elections, in which the growing Hispanic community largely turned against Republicans, a broad coalition of business, labour, law enforcement and religious communities is viewing 2013 as the year that comprehensive reforms could be possible.

And they’re almost unanimous in stating that the current bill is a strong starting point.

“On the whole, we think this is a good bill, and does a really good job of including all core elements you need for a reform bill like this,” Mark Falzone, the deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“People on the right and left are going to be critical of certain aspects of this proposal, but that’s the nature of compromise. We haven’t had meaningful immigration reform in this country in recent memory, but this time is clearly different, with both Democrats and Republics pushing hard.”

Still, one of the most contentious issues remains the presence in the United States of around 11 million undocumented immigrants. These migrants tend to be seen as critical labour by the business community, as lawbreakers by conservatives, and as victims of an inhumane system by liberals.

Thus, the centrepiece of the new bill includes a highly controversial route to citizenship for the undocumented. The plan would normalise their status after they pay fees and taxes, and pass a criminal background check and other requirements, and allow them to progress towards citizenship.

This has been a baseline demand by liberals, but the proposition is already leading to the most explosive responses from conservatives worried about “rewarding” lawbreakers. (In fact, Mexican migration into the United States has almost completely stopped in recent years, due to both demographic and economic changes in Mexico.)

At the same time, the new legislation would continue to step up security along the U.S.-Mexico border, presumably increasing fencing and personnel while potentially adding unmanned surveillance drones to the mix.

“We have included a lengthy path to citizenship … contingent on doing everything possible to make the borders secure,” Senator John McCain, one of the architects of the new bill and a Republican who in the past has faced stiff resistance for deal-making on immigration, told reporters Thursday.

“Republicans have got to compete for the Hispanic vote. Passage of this legislation wouldn’t gain a single vote from the Hispanic community but it would put us on a level where we could compete in the battle of ideas. Right now, we’re not competitive.”

13-year wait

Still, the new proposal would not make the citizenship programme effective immediately. Rather, as McCain notes, it would be conditional on the creation of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) strategy to achieve a specified border security “effectiveness” rate.

If DHS were to be unable to do so within six months, the bill would require the creation of a commission led by border states.

Yet even if that strategy were to be deemed acceptable, those hoping to get “provisional” status en route to citizenship would end up waiting years to decades. Under the new proposal, the minimum wait time would be 13 years, which some immigration advocates are saying is unjustly long.

Further, a proposed cut-off date for eligibility for the “provisional” status is currently December 2011, barring those who arrived thereafter. Yet this would leave a few hundred thousand people who automatically wouldn’t qualify – putting them permanently in the position that the new legislation is trying to ameliorate once and for all.

Most migrant children within the European Union are from member countries like Romania and Hungary, as well as from Turkey. Credit: Daan Bauwens/IPS

By Sabine Clappaert
BRUSSELS, Apr 2 2013 (IPS)

Twenty-two-year-old Dario (not his real name) came to Belgium from Brazil in 2005. Just a teenager at the time, he told IPS he “came to escape the economic, social and political conditions in Brazil and to learn another language”.

“In the beginning it was hard. Not speaking the language prevented me from doing certain jobs and there was also the risk of getting sick because I have no health insurance.”

Luckily, he says, the large Brazilian community in Brussels welcomed him with open arms.

“Of course one also suffers from the financial and moral exploitation of certain people who take advantage, but I don’t complain. Life is a sequence of good and bad experiences; it is part of the risk I took to better my life.”

The promise of a better future remains the principle reason why scores of children – some as young as three years, others as old as seventeen – flock to Europe, even though there is no guarantee that what they find here will be worth the trip.

While it is estimated that there are between 1.6 and 3.8 million irregular migrants in the European Union, there are no reliable figures on the percentage that are children.

Hard data is almost impossible to pin down since these children represent a multifaceted and diverse group, experts say. Most hail from other European countries like Turkey, Hungary and Romania, but a large number also come from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Some enter the EU independently, some come with families, or were born to parents without legal status in a particular country.

Motives for migration also vary, and include family reunification, protection from persecution, or better living conditions, education and economic opportunities. A large number of these children, mostly those from Hungary and Romania, are also victims of trafficking.

Last year the UK police, with the help of Romanian authorities, rolled up a complex trafficking network run from Romania, which was using children to rake in hundreds of thousands of pounds through street crime and benefit fraud.

In a series of dawn raids codenamed “Operation Norman” officers found 103 migrant children crammed into just 16 addresses in London.

The operation took place against the backdrop of a steady rise in the number of children arriving unaccompanied in Europe, risking detention. Although some manage to enter state welfare systems, others end up living in hiding.

The financial crisis has intensified the situation, especially in EU border countries like Greece.

“Despite the European Commission’s efforts to promote harmonised regulations, the normative framework in the EU27 for the protection of undocumented migrant children is still quite diverse,” Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, special representative and coordinator for combatting trafficking in human beings at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), told IPS.

“The implementation of national legislation is even more fragmented. Therefore, unfortunately, a common and effective child protection system does not exist at the EU level.”

Organisations like the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) have raised the alarm about the need to guarantee the basic human rights of Europe’s “invisible” children.

“Undocumented children are in a position of triple vulnerability: as children above all, as migrants and because of their irregular status,” Michelle LeVoy of PICUM told IPS. Many families are simply unaware of their rights to housing, food and education, she said.

Despite numerous explicit and legally binding international and regional instruments that guarantee children access to their civil and social rights, countless barricades stand between rights on paper and rights in practice.

“In Spain, for instance, undocumented children in theory have the same access to healthcare as Spanish nationals do,” said LeVoy. But implementation of a new healthcare law in September 2012 aimed at restricting undocumented adults’ access to healthcare services also impacted their children.

In some countries only “essential” or “urgent” medical care may be free of charge for undocumented children, broadly defined terms that often lead to discretionary and unpredictable application of healthcare legislation.

Barriers around education are equally complex. While the constitutions of several countries grant everyone the right to education, red tape often keeps undocumented children out of the system.

“(P)ractical and concrete barriers, rather than direct legal discrimination, make integration (into the education system) almost impossible,” according to LeVoy. “Throughout the EU undocumented children are often prevented from enrolling in schools simply because they lack identification documents and a permanent address.

“Admission depends on the decision of directors and school administrators, and those decisions are arbitrary,” she said.

OSCE’s Giammarinaro believes that “member states should establish effective procedures based on the best interests of the child, whose actual implementation should be adequately monitored, especially in the case of unaccompanied and separated children”.

A second disturbing trend is the increasing number of reports of unaccompanied foreign minors disappearing from immigration reception centres 
and residential care, often without a trace.

A study by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reveals that the disappearance of children from shelters and similar facilities is widespread, and that there is a high risk of these children falling victim to trafficking.

“Children and adolescents on the move are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation,” says Giammarinaro. “They can be exploited in prostitution, forced labour, organised begging and can be compelled to commit crimes. Therefore, the prevention of trafficking and the protection of undocumented children are inextricably linked.”

Experts have identified teenagers between the ages of 13 and 
18 years as a major at-risk group for trafficking in Eastern Europe. Even those children aware of the dangers of trafficking say they were nonetheless ready to migrate using insecure channels, according to recent UNICEF research in Moldova.

Idealised perceptions of a better lifestyle coupled with stories of success from people who have been abroad encourage risk-taking among disadvantaged youth, researchers say.

With unemployment hitting record-levels across the EU, stemming the tide of young people in search of a better future seems almost impossible and for many governments the only perceived solution, albeit short-term, is the expatriation of so-called “unwanted immigrants”.

In 2010, the OCSE advised that migrant, undocumented, unaccompanied, separated and trafficked children should not automatically be returned to their country of origin, or resettled or transferred to a third country, stating that migration control concerns cannot override the best interests of a child.

“In the absence of the availability of care provided by parents or members of the extended family, return to the country of origin should, in principle, not take place without advance secure and concrete arrangements of care and custodial responsibilities upon return to the country of origin.”

Luis Mendão, president of the Portuguese Group of Activists for Treatment for HIV/AIDS. Credit: Mario Queiroz/IPS

By Mario Queiroz
LISBON, Mar 28 2013 (IPS)

In 1996, Luís Mendão was shocked to learn that he had contracted HIV/AIDS, and that the infection was advanced because of the late diagnosis. Racing against time, he began to put his affairs in order and to get ready to face his death.

However, after a year of treatment, he felt better and realised that his life was not about to end tomorrow. “I am still alive, but the cost would have been much less if I had known earlier,” he said in an interview with IPS at the Second Conference on HIV Infection in Hard to Reach Groups, held Monday and Tuesday Mar. 25-26 in Lisbon.

This is what makes him want to address the situation of undocumented immigrants, who because of red tape are prevented from having health tests and receiving treatment for illnesses like HIV/AIDS.

Today Mendão is the most visible face of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Portugal.

But the activist, who has a degree in biochemistry, “is not only seen as a reference point in Portugal, but is also the most dynamic activist in Europe and one of the most important internationally,” the co-chair of the EU HIV/AIDS Civil Society Forum, Anna Zakowicz, told IPS.

Mendão is head of the Pedro Santos Portuguese Group of Activists for HIV/AIDS Treatment (GAT), founded in 2001 to foment cooperation between people from different communities and organisations who are affected by the illness. He is also vice president of the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG).

Q: You have often been cited as an example, not only in your own country but also abroad, of someone who did not hesitate to come out of the closet when being HIV-positive was still taboo. What can you tell us about this?

A: In September 1996, after a very difficult year in which I had little money and no work, my health suddenly collapsed. I was hospitalised for a week for tests. On the seventh day, the duty doctor told me the situation was very serious, my lungs were affected, my immune system was compromised and I had a complex and highly resistant anaemia.

It was AIDS, everything started to make sense – the overwhelming fatigue, the lung problem, my eyes, the virus infections, my loss of several kilos in weight.

For 10 years I had been doing the rounds of the health services being treated for molluscum virus skin infections (water warts), Herpes zoster (shingles), candidiasis (a yeast infection), and unexplained fatigue. Not once did anyone suggest an HIV test. I am still alive, but the cost would have been much less if I had known earlier on what I had. Take my advice: it is best to know.

Q: And that is when your battle for health began, and also for the law to guarantee access to treatment for all. Now, people who do not have health system user cards, like undocumented migrants, are being excluded. How can the state behave in this illegal way?

A: The 2001 law, which was regarded as a major humanitarian advance, establishes that anyone living in Portugal, even undocumented persons, have a right to use the National Health Service (SNS).

The law has not changed, but a stratagem is being used. Illegal immigrants are not denied an SNS card, but they are given an unnumbered card, which is rejected by the computer system, so that they cannot access health care treatment such as anti-AIDS therapy.

Q: The conference in Lisbon is aimed particularly at “men who have sex with men and sex workers.” Why is this?

A: In Portugal, a high proportion of men who have sex with men do so in secret and live in the closet. It is a situation that does not appear in medical records, because it is something they do not wish to talk about. As for sex workers, a large number of them are undocumented immigrants, which means they have no access to the SNS.

These two groups are considered by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as fundamental in questions related to the virus, but there was very little information about the prevalence of infection and their problems need to be addressed, especially when it comes to the additional problems of immigrant rights.

The most vulnerable group is sex workers who are undocumented immigrants.

We are talking about people who, since they have no numbered health service cards, have to pay for tests and doctors’ visits, which in this poor and marginalised population effectively prevents detection, treatment and prevention of the illness.

Q: Is the economic and financial crisis bringing back street prostitution?

A: It has. Given the need to survive, the crisis has drawn some people in a difficult economic situation into the sex trade, despite the risk of HIV/AIDS. Many women have begun to work as prostitutes in the last two years, and others who had left this life have returned to it.

Ninety percent of sex workers are women, and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS infection is uneven, as street prostitutes are much more vulnerable to contracting and transmitting the virus than women who work in apartments.

Q: No doubt support for combating the epidemic has also been affected by the crisis.

A: There is a very serious problem with access to medication. At the moment the situation is just about covered, but it may spiral out of control at any time.

What we have found in our area, where the (antiretroviral) drugs are extremely expensive, is that new cases, especially among immigrants or Portuguese nationals who have returned to the country after living in Africa for many years, are rejected by many hospitals.

Then, for the last two years there has been no funding to support urgent new projects. For instance, state support for GAT has fallen from 70 percent to 30 percent of its total budget.

This is appalling, especially for Portugal, the country with the worst conditions in Western Europe for the four groups hit hardest by HIV/AIDS: homosexuals, sex workers, drug users and sub-Saharan immigrants.

Excerpt:

A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant prepares to head to the U.S. Credit: Wilfredo Díaz/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Monday unveiled a set of principles that will serve as an initial framework for a legislative push that many are increasingly optimistic could result in the largest overhaul of the country’s immigration system in decades.

While the exact details of any future legislation will take months to be formulated, some advocates are warning that too much emphasis is being placed on enforcing security along the U.S.-Mexico border, an element that has stymied progress on immigration reform for years.

The announcement comes just a day ahead of a planned major address by President Barack Obama, in which he will outline his own vision for such an overhaul. While some are suggesting the congressional package may have undercut the president’s announcement, on Monday the president’s spokesperson called the new proposal “a big deal … an important development”.

“Other bipartisan groups of senators have stood in this same spot, but we believe this will be the year Congress finally gets it right,” one of the members of the eight-senator team that put together the framework, Chuck Schumer, a Democratic senator and a key Obama ally, told journalists Monday.

“The politics on this have been turned upside down. For the first time ever, there is more political risk in opposing this type of reform than in supporting it, and we believe we have a window to act.”

The new proposals outline cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, increasing visas for skilled workers, and establishing an agricultural worker programme. Critically, and most controversially, they also foresee creating a “tough but fair path to citizenship” for the 11 million unauthorised immigrants currently thought to be living in the country.

Schumer says the legislation will hopefully be out of the Senate and headed to the U.S. House of Representatives by late spring or summer, while the House is reportedly already at work on its own bill.

“The Senate immigration framework is a welcome step forward toward identifying the core issues to address and negotiate,” Manuel Orozco, director of remittances and development at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“The requirement of a two-stage legalisation process for undocumented migrants, accompanied by improved measures to reduce the number of visa overstays and to respond to demands for skilled foreign labour, set important parametres for a pathway to citizenship and for an orderly process of integrating foreign labour into the U.S. economy with fewer disruptions.”

Border obsession

Worrying some advocates, however, is that the new proposal makes that path to citizenship “contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required”. In part, this threatens to offer a retread of the debate that has so polarised U.S. politicians in recent years, with conservatives demanding that the border be “secured” before any broader reforms can progress.

“It sounds like using the word ‘contingent’ means that border protection will again be an obstacle to reform, and the reality is that it doesn’t need to be that,” Vicki B. Gaubeca, director of the Regional Center for Border Rights, a programme by the New Mexico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told IPS.

“I don’t think the American public is aware of how many resources are already deployed along the border, and really you don’t need more Border Patrol agents – we have enough boots on the ground. Instead, we need to shift back to the many other parts of the immigration system that haven’t been updated in decades.”

Gaubeca says that recent years have led to such an increase in the number of personnel along the border that there are now 10 Border Patrol agents per mile. The result is a 40-year low in apprehensions.

“What’s ironic is that immigration is actually less problematic now than it has been for decades,” Jacob L. Vigdor, a professor of economics at Duke University, said Monday.

He notes that the flow of immigrants has slowed “to a trickle” from Mexico, where the birth rate has fallen over the past generation. Such trends, Vigdor says, suggest that the intensity of the Mexican immigration to the United States of the past quarter-century is most likely now a thing of the past.

“To do reform the right way, though, Congress will have to stop obsessing about last decade’s problem – the porous Mexican border,” Vigdor says, “and instead focus on the future, when the United States will be competing with other developed countries to attract the most talented, entrepreneurial workers.”

First step

Reforming the United States’ massive and unwieldy immigration system has for decades been politically explosive on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Although major new legislation was put in place during the mid-1980s, since that time millions of undocumented migrants are estimated to have come into the country.

Those communities have played a significant part in undergirding the country’s economy, but they’ve also galvanised conservative reaction on the issue. A massively heavy-handed response by the U.S. government has not only funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars towards anti-immigration efforts, but also forced illegal immigrants to live shadowed and marginalised lives.

With 70 percent of the country’s Latino population having supported President Obama’s re-election bid, however, a newly bipartisan understanding of the political, economic and humane impetus has now led to an unprecedented legislative push.

On Monday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobby group, expressed its “strong support” for the new Senate proposal as a starting point, broadly mirroring sentiment expressed across ideologies on Monday.

“This (framework) represents an important start to the legislative debate, particularly since this is a bipartisan effort and represents a new willingness to work together,” Doris Meissner, a senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a Washington think tank, and a former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, told IPS.

“The proposal succeeds in attempting to balance the demands for effective enforcement with the practical reality that 11 million people are living and working in this country without legal status and that their situation must be addressed.”

Earlier this month, MPI published the first comprehensive look at how the U.S. immigration complex has grown in recent years. According to that report, Washington spends more on immigration enforcement each year than on all other federal law-enforcement agencies combined, and keeps more people locked up for immigration purposes – around 430,000 in 2011 – than the entire federal prisons system.

Day labourers of Hempstead, Long Island. Credit: Rebecca Hanser/IPS

By Rebecca Hanser
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 2012 (IPS)

Undocumented immigrants have played a significant role in recovery efforts since Hurricane Sandy swept the northeast United States one month ago. But despite their contributions, they have been left in the storm’s wake with little financial, legal or moral support.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), almost 236,000 New Yorkers requested financial relief after Hurricane Sandy, which brought devastation, hardship and billions of dollars in damages.

But for day labourers – men and women without full-time employment, who search for temporary work to make ends meet – natural disasters such as Sandy mean opportunities for work, even if workers are unauthorised and ill-equipped for the job. These factors often lead to dangerous working conditions and exploitation.

These day workers are usually undocumented immigrants, predominantly from Latin America who, unaware of their rights, often fall victim to unscrupulous employers who not only fail to pay them but also expose them to dangerous working circumstances that leave them vulnerable injury or even death.

Risky business

“After the hurricane, we mostly did cleaning jobs in hotels, at the beaches and parking lots because everything was flooded or covered in dirt and mud,” José, a 43-year-old Honduran immigrant, told IPS. José was one of the many day labourers waiting for work at a parking lot in Hempstead, Long Island.

“No one protects us here, neither our employers, nor the clients,” Ruiz, a 72-year-old Honduran, told IPS. “We are on our own. We don’t have protection but someone has to do the job. After Sandy, many labourers got sick and injured because with such natural disasters you don’t make it out without coming down with something.”

Local authorities and government agencies have emphasised the need for licensed and experienced professionals to handle the post-Sandy cleanup, but these rules are often broken amidst chaos and disaster. Because of the hurricane, many contractors, homeowners and other victims hired day labourers.

“This government has lied and abandoned us! They don’t care about us. And that’s why we have to unite as one, and be a family to each other, because if they don’t care for us, who [will]?” added Ruiz.

A 52-year-old Salvadoran by the name of Lucas is one of the day labourers responsible for bringing attention to this situation. “The government should listen to us,” he said. He said that demonstrations have brought the labourers confidence. “The last one was even aired on television and got people talking about and noticing us. Finally we are not invisible anymore,” he added.

Describing post-Sandy in Long Island as a “war zone”, day labourer Francisco, 46, fled from his native country of El Salvador because of the civil war. After travelling on foot and by train and bus, he eventually wound up in New York, searching for work. “I’ve travelled a long and dangerous road to get here in hope of a better future. Instead I ended up as a day labourer.”

Calls for more safety and protection

As the number of day labourers has risen, so have centres that pursue better working conditions for them. Among these organisations are the Workers Justice Project (WJP), the NDLON and El Centro del Inmigrante (ECDI).

These centres aim to achieve economic and social empowerment through education, leadership development and counselling. In order to reduce labourers’ chances of being exploited, they also teach them about their rights and the laws that support them.

“We are always fighting for our lives while doing this work and there is so much insecurity every day, whether we will have work or not, because we depend on patrones [employers] who come…to offer us work,” Carlos, 50, from El Salvador told IPS.

Jorge, a 52-year-old Honduran, highlighted the problem that all day labourers face: “Most patrones are abusers. They hire us to work for them but refuse to pay us. We have no right to file a complaint because we are undocumented immigrants.”

Hurricane Sandy has made it more difficult for these centres to assist and counsel day labourers on their quest for work in hard-hit areas of New York.

“Our centre in Brooklyn was unfortunately badly damaged by the flooding,” said Ligia Guallpa, director of the WJP, during a press telebriefing. “Basically we’re left without a centre.” She expressed concerns over the day labourers who are currently working on the reconstruction of particularly battered areas like Coney Island and Sea Gate.

“Now, more than ever there is a need for these day labourers,” Guallpa emphasised. “Many of these workers are now being picked off the street instead of coming to the centre first, which means that they are being exposed to all kinds of violations.”

Guallpa called the entire situation “very unfortunate”, estimating that more than 10,000 day labourers are helping to reconstruct parts of New York and New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Physical and legal safety

Guallpa added that having the centre operate again would be critical so that “the labourers can help rebuild the communities with proper equipment, training resources and assistance”.

Nadia Marina Molina, programme coordinator at the NDLON, agreed with this, pointing out that day workers need not only sufficient information but also proper equipment, which employers often don’t provide. In this spirit, her group has developed a “health and safety material series…for workers and organisations who want to distribute them”.

Located on the north shore of Staten Island, El Centro del Inmigrante (ECDI) had a little more luck than WJP and was not affected by the storm. As a result, they could start on recovery efforts immediately.

“Already twenty families came to our centre for work […] of which most stayed with friends and family because they had to evacuate their homes,” explained Gonzalo Mercado, executive director at ECDI, during the telebriefing.

So far, neither of the centres experienced any type of immigration enforcement actions against illegal and undocumented immigrants, identity checking procedures, arrests or deportation.

Guallpa hoped that none of these actions would come soon, and with good reason. “A lot of day labourers are actually members of the community,” she emphasised, “who live and work here and work hard to rebuild”.