PRESS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT

PRESS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT

There were many different migration policies in individual countries, but a coherent, worldwide policy did not exist, Rita Sussmuth, President of Ota University in Berlin, told correspondents at Headquarters this afternoon.

Ms. Sussmuth made her remarks during a press conference on the occasion of the thirty-ninth session of the Commission on Population and Development, which focused on the topic of international migration and development.  The Commission’s deliberations will be used as input to the September high-level General Assembly dialogue on the issue.  Other participants in the press conference were Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division; Papa Owusu-Ankomah, Minister of the Interior of Ghana; and J. Edward Taylor, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis.

Ms. Sussmuth said that, for a coherent approach, goals and principals had to be clarified.  A “win-win situation” had to be created for both sending and receiving countries.  The benefits of international migration should be maximized and the negative consequences of migration minimized.  In that regard, a lot of human potential had been wasted.

Although there was a general negative image of migrants, the fact remained that the developed countries needed them, she said.  A national policy that covered all areas of migration, education, training, work and legal status was also needed.  International migration was, moreover, a cultural problem, a question of preventing a clash of civilizations.

Mr. Owusu-Ankomah said his country was confronted with the emigration of many professionals, mainly in the health and education sectors.  Originally, they had been seen as selfish.  However, the Government had realized that the problem of migration was as old as the world and had, therefore, developed policies to get the best out of its diaspora, in order to make migration into a “motor for”, rather than a “brake on”, development.  Last year, the Government had established a migration unit in the Ministry of the Interior with representatives of various ministries and agencies, in order to come to coherent policies that would permeate throughout national programmes.  In order to get the diaspora more connected with Ghana, Ghanaians abroad, for instance, could now register to vote.  His country was looking at migration in a positive way.

He said many Africans risked their lives by crossing the Sahara, in order to reach Europe, thinking that everything there was rosy.  Those people needed to be provided with better information about the reality for unskilled people there.  In Ghana, almost every family had a member residing outside the country.  Policies were needed to get the best out of migration, but one country could not do it alone.  Coherent national, regional and global policies were necessary.  “Without coherence, we cannot get the best out of migration, whether we are receiving, transit or sending countries.”

Mr. Taylor said the question once, was whether migration was good or bad for development.  Today, the question is how international migration could be used to support development.  Migration was simply part of the development process.  In some countries, the major part of their foreign exchange came from remittances.  Some countries made more money from remittances than from all of their other exports combined.  One way of making international migration a tool for development was increasing the flow of remittances, for instance by reducing transaction costs and creating incentives, such as matching schemes.  Another way was increasing investments back into the country of origin.  Also, there was a possible multiplier effect in spending received remittances.  The question was how to increase that multiplier effect, in order to raise productivity.  That meant working with the migrants and making them partners in development.  Political and macroeconomic stability was important in that regard.  A third way was investing in people, by ensuring broad access to education at all levels in migrant-sending areas.  The brain drain was likely to be less of a problem in areas where there was broad access to education and broad access for well-educated people to employment opportunities at home.

Answering a correspondent’s question about a possible agreement on a cohesive policy, Ms. Sussmuth said the first step in the European Union had been a common management of asylum seekers.  Now, the problem was labour migration and integration.  Common rules and procedures were needed.  One key problem in bringing member States together was that many States had minimum standards.  Only States that needed migrants were willing to go beyond those minimum standards.

Asked why migration had been slowing down over the last 15 years, Ms. Zlotnik said that was not the case.  Migration had increased.  Statistics just showed that the number of people living abroad had decreased over that period, but that was mainly because of the return of some 20 million refugees to their home countries.  Ms. Sussmuth added that many countries did not have clear statistics on migration.  Also, there was an increased number of undocumented migrants.

Addressing the same question, Mr. Owusu-Ankomah stated that putting up barriers could not restrict migration.  Those barriers also encouraged human trafficking.  As migration was “as old as Adam and Eve”, the question was how best to manage migration into a win-win situation for all.

Mr. Taylor said that the 2000 United States census had borne out that there was no decrease in migration.  Collected data had also indicated that border enforcement had no impact on migration flows from rural Mexico into the United States.  They just made illegal border crossings more expensive and discouraged return migration.

Asked about fertility levels and the ageing population in developed countries, Ms. Sussmuth said that the fertility rate had gone down for years and had been compensated by migration flows.  Migrants were necessary.  There were a lot of people that were not willing to do the work they did in the past.  That was now being done by migrants.  The developing world also had demographic problems, such as great youth unemployment.  Those people tried to escape poverty.

Ms. Zlotnik added that, as far as the United States was concerned, the fertility rate had not dropped as far as in Europe.  They were slightly below the replacement level of 2.1, but not very much, and would not go down below 1.85.  The United States would have some problem in maintaining the size of its labour force, but nothing compared to Europe.  Some of the low fertility rates among white Americans were balanced by those of minority groups.  Migration was, therefore, less necessary for the United States than for Europe.  This proved that migration was not driven by demographic trends, but by the economy.

Answering a question about United States policies on migration, Ms. Zlotnik said that every country was concerned about violations of their laws.  More and more countries were establishing laws to allow for temporary migration and many countries wanted to maintain or increase the migration level.  How to control illegal migration had been a long-term issue.

Mr. Taylor said the effectiveness of different countries’ policies on migration depended on the nature of the international migration flows.  In the case of migration from Mexico to the United States, the effects of policies were very small, approaching zero.  What was really driving the process of migration was a network of contacts with people who had previously migrated.  That created an enormous momentum, which was difficult to influence in a statistically significant way.  This phenomenon was different from the sphere of legal migration to the United States.

Mr. Owusu-Ankomah said that, even in his own country, Ghana, there had been complaints about “leaky” borders.  That happened at every stage of development.  That did not necessarily mean that a country was becoming anti-migration.  All it meant was that countries wanted migration to be regular and in accordance with existing law.  Each individual country faced its own challenges.  The easier it was for persons to migrate, the less difficult it was for a country to manage it.

Ms. Sussmuth added that the problem in Europe was one of integration.  During the 1960s and 1970s, Europe had asked for many unskilled guest workers.  They had subsequently lost their jobs and had been unemployed for years.  The next generation was suffering from that, and were turning back to their ethnic and cultural communities.  However, the cultural problems had to be separated from the socio-economic problems.  Two thirds of the Turkish and Arab people were highly integrated.  At the moment, there was a broad discussion in Germany, Denmark, France and The Netherlands on how to integrate the remaining one third.  The one-sided policy was learn the language and assimilate.  That was not the kind of mutual learning needed.

That the Russian Federation had the second highest population of migrants stemmed from the fact that, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, people who used to be internal migrants had become international migrants, said Ms. Zlotnik.  With its low fertility rate, however, the country was importing migrant labour.  China was now also a labour importing country, mainly of professionals.  During this morning’s meeting, the Chinese representative had said that China recognized that every country needed to open itself to new cultures and to engage socially and economically with the rest of the world.  Ms. Zlotnik said that no country could stand alone and be an island.  Migration was part of the mesh that linked all countries.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record