Human Development Report 2009

Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development

General Premise

Large gains to human development can be achieved by lowering the barriers to movement and improving the treatment of movers.

The UNDP report sets out a case for a comprehensive set of reforms that can provide major benefits to migrants, communities and countries. Addressing two dimensions:admissions and treatment.

Six major directions for reform• Opening up existing entry channels so that more

workers can emigrate,• ensuring basic rights for migrants, • lowering the transaction costs of migration, • finding solutions that benefit both destination

communities and the migrants they receive,• making it easier for people to move within their

own countries,• mainstreaming migration into national

development strategies

The core package highlights two avenues for opening up regular existing entry channels:

expanding schemes for truly seasonal work in sectors such as agriculture and tourism.

• should involve unions and employers, together with the destination and source country governments, particularly in designing and implementing basic wage guarantees, health and safety standards and provisions for example, for repeat visits shown in the case of New Zealand,

increasing the number of visas for low-skilled people, making this conditional on local demand , with conditional paths to

extension

• Experience suggests that good practices here include:– ensuring immigrants have the right to change employers

(known as employer portability), – offering immigrants the right to apply to extend their

stay and – outlining pathways to eventual permanent residence, – making provisions that facilitate return trips during the

visa period, and – allowing the transfer of accumulated social security

benefits

Number of Entrants

• Destination countries should decide on the desired numbers of entrants through political processes that permit public discussion and the balancing of different interests.

• Transparent mechanisms to determine the number of entrants should be based on employer demand, with quotas according to economic conditions.

Treatment• At destination, immigrants are often treated in

ways that infringe on their basic human rights. • Even if governments do not ratify the

international conventions that protect migrant workers, they should ensure that migrants have full rights in the workplace—to equal pay for equal work, decent working conditions and collective organization, for example.

Economic Crisis• The current recession has made migrants particularly

vulnerable. Some destination country governments have stepped up the enforcement of migration laws in ways that can infringe on migrants’ rights.

• Giving laid-off migrants the opportunity to search for another employer, publicizing employment outlooks—including downturns in source countries—are all measures that can reduce the negative effects of the crisis

Transaction Costs• For international movement, the transaction costs of

acquiring the necessary papers and meeting the administrative requirements to cross national borders are often – high, – tend to be regressive (proportionately higher for

unskilled people and those on short-term contracts) and

– can also have the unintended effect of encouraging irregular movement and smuggling.

Reducing Transaction Costs

• Both origin and destination governments can simplify procedures and reduce document costs, while the two sides can also work together to improve and regulate intermediation services.

• It is important to both ensure that individual migrants settle in well on arrival, and that the local communities are informed and have the necessary support for key public services to cope with new groups of people

Restrictions on Movement

• A high number of countries, about a third—still maintain defacto barriers to internal movement.

• Restrictions typically take the form of reduced basic service provisions and entitlements for those not registered in the local area, thereby discriminating against internal migrants

Access to Services

• Ensuring equity of basic service provision is a key recommendation of the report as regards to internal migrants.

• Equal treatment is important for temporary and seasonal workers and their families, for the regions where they go to work, and

• Also must ensure decent service provision back home so that they are not compelled to move in order to access schools and health care.

Difficulties

• What to do about people with irregular status?

– Expanding seasonal work– Expand visas for low skilled work

Irregular Migration• Various approaches have been used by

governments to address the issue. – Amnesty schemes are announced and remain open for a

finite period— these have been used in various European countries as well as in Latin America.

– Ongoing administrative mechanisms may grant some type of legal status on a discretionary basis—for example, on the basis of family ties, as is possible in the United States.

– Forced returns to the country of origin have also been pursued.

• None of these measures is uncontroversial.

Extensions & Pathways• Right to apply for extension and pathways to

permanence. – This will be at the discretion of the host government and,

as at present, is usually subject to a set of specific conditions.

• Nevertheless, extension of temporary permits is possible in many developed countries (e.g.Canada, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States), and some developing countries (e.g. Ecuador and Malaysia). – Whether the permit is renewed indefinitely may depend

on bilateral agreements.

Permanent Residence

• Some countries grant the opportunity for migrants to convert temporary into permanent status after several years of regular residence (e.g. in Italy after six years, and in Portugal and the United Kingdom after five).

• This may be conditional on, for example, the migrant’s labour market record and lack of criminal convictions.

Circularity

• Provisions to facilitate circularity. – The freedom to move back and forth between host

and source country can enhance benefits for migrants and their origin countries.

• Portability of accumulated social security benefits is a further advantage that can encourage circularity.

Employer Portability

• Tying people to specific employers prevents them from finding better opportunities and

• Thus is both economically inefficient and socially undesirable.

Earned Regularizations• So-called ‘earned regularizations’, as tried in a

number of countries, may be the most viable way forward.

• These provide irregular migrants with a provisional permit to live and work in the host country, initially for a finite period, which can be extended or made permanent through the fulfillment of various criteria, such as language acquisition, maintaining stable employment and paying taxes.

• There is no initial amnesty but rather a conditional permission to transit to full residence status.

Ingredients for Success

• The varied European experience suggests that among the key ingredients of successful regularizations are:– the involvement of civil society organizations,

migrant associations and employers in planning and implementation;

– guarantee against expulsion during the process; and

– clear qualifying criteria (for example, length of residence, employment record and family ties).

Forced Returns

• Forced returns are especially controversial.• Their number has been rising sharply in some

countries, surpassing 350,000 in the United States and 300,000 in South Africa in 2008 alone.

Human Enforcement Policies?

• What should humane enforcement policies look like?

• Most people argue that there needs to be some sanctions for breaches of border control and work rules and that, alongside discretionary regularization, forced returns have a place in the policy armory

Sanctions

• But implementing this sanction raises major challenges,

• Especially in cases where the individuals concerned have lived and worked in the country for many years and may have family members who are legally resident.

Rule of Law & Protection of Rights

• It is clearly important that, where individuals with irregular status are identified, enforcement procedures should follow the rule of law and basic rights should be respected.

• There is a need to establish the accountability of employers who engage workers with irregular status.