Statement on International Migrants?Day 2008

18 December 2008



                  



On this day, Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) celebrates International Migrants?Day and calls out to the world to recognize the rights, struggles and contributions of migrants.  



Over 250 million people worldwide are migrants ?living, working, raising families and building communities in places outside their countries of origin.  The contributions of migrants are vast and multifaceted, with their hard work, dedication and creativity supporting the social, economic and cultural foundations of societies around the world.  Countries have prospered as migrant workers have built their national infrastructure and fuelled the engines of their economies.



MFA lauds Jamaica and Paraguay who this year joined with migrants and their allies in defending the rights of migrants by ratifying the UN Convention on Migrant Workers and their Families. This brings the total number of ratifications of the UN 1990 MWC to 40 (see: www.mfasia.org for more details)    Also we are very pleased with the approval of General Recommendation (GR) 26 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which aims to address the grave violations and discrimination against women migrant workers in countries of origin, destination and while in transit.  Finally, we commend the International Labour Organization (ILO) in preparing a proposal for a Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Worker at the International Labour Conference in 2010.  MFA commits to engaging in this process as a step to advancing international protection for women migrant workers.



Each day, migrants brave great challenges as they leave their homes and families.  Yet even as governments and international organizations claim the profound contributions of migrants, they have established policies that defy the most fundamental human and labour rights of migrants.  It is clear that economic globalization and the neo-liberalized market approach that it endorses have cut deeply into the inalienable rights and dignity that we celebrate during the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  



Human rights are built through their realization in both law and practice.  Without the fulfillment of both, migrants?rights become null and void.   The global community has pledged to uphold rights of all humans; however, the reports of violence waged against migrant workers are by no means rare.  



Rarely are governments being proactive in enforcing human rights treaties and labour laws already in place.  Unpaid wages, long working hours without rest or overtime pay, discrimination, intimidation, confinement, physical beatings, sexual harassment, rape and other abuses in the workplace, non-compensation in cases of industrial accidents and absence of redress mechanism fill out the long list of violations.    



Migrant workers have become the face of the race to the bottom for low wages in order to satisfy the demand to expand profit margins and eliminate labour regulations.  Amidst the global shocks from the convergence of the energy, financial, food and climate crises, international bodies (i.e. the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and several countries of the Global North have stepped up pressures to conclude the Doha 밆evelopment?Rounds.  Doha aims to open up markets to the advantage of a select few, maintaining a legacy of putting profits before people, and markets before rights.  



The Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) has become another platform to open up negotiations on migrant labour, under the pretext of promoting development through remittances.  Governments have found yet another instrument to promote a corporate agenda capitalizing on migrant workers, but in this case, meetings happen all behind closed doors.  



For the voracious appetite of the neo-liberal, market economy urged by Doha and the GFMD, migrant workers are simply commodities to be 밿mported?and 밻xported? when deemed obsolete.  Aggressive recruitment continues to lure skilled professionals away from countries which desperately need their expertise.  At the same time, many countries are focusing their efforts to train working-age men and women be sent overseas through massive labour export schemes.  



To ensure compliance, migrant workers face intense controls over their movements, in transit and in their workplaces.  Disturbing security measures have become the norm with entry of private homes, detention of children, and indiscriminate arrests and deportation, all working to characterize migrants as criminal outsiders. Migrants are used in political maneuvers which flout their dignity and security while criminalizing them simply by virtue of their immigration status.  



Irregular migrant workers are among the most at risk.  Daily, they are confronted by the prospect of arrest, detention and deportation.  Employers often use the threat of arrest to exploit migrant workers with irregular status in terms non-payment of wages, poor working and living conditions.   Recently, in the Gyeonggi province of Korea, immigration officials and police forced their way into the homes and dormitories of migrant workers, indiscriminately arresting and subsequently deporting about 100 migrant workers.  In Malaysia, just days ago, about 150 Indonesian irregular workers were forcibly repatriated.  In fact, since August 2008, at least 14,600 migrants have been expelled including about 10,000 Filipinos and 3,800 Indonesians, with deportations occurring weekly (World Politics Review, Nov. 27, 2008).  



Women migrant workers are highly vulnerable to discrimination and abuse.  In many countries, female caregivers that become pregnant are no longer considered employable and required to leave the country.  For many migrant domestic workers, another restrictive policy is the work visa which bonds migrants to one employer.  



Leaving an employer is treated as a crime.  Even in situations where workers manage to escape abuse, they are immediately deemed 밿llegal? 밼ugitive?migrants.    The systematic criminalization and denigration of migrants is inhumane and grossly disregards the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all peoples guaranteed by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.  



Migrant Forum in Asia calls for an immediate halt to all forms of abuse and violence against migrants and their families, and an end to all forms of extortion, oppressive and exploitative practices and policies by employers, recruiters, agencies, and governments.  More must be done to ensure the rights of the human rights of migrant workers and their families irregardless of their status, regular or irregular, documented or undocumented.  To this end, we call for the cancellation of the EU Directive passed in June of this year.  We echo the view of Amnesty International that the EU Directive is contrary to human rights standards and does not assure the safety and dignity of irregular migrants, particularly with its allowance for excessive, even indefinite detention, and forcible return.  



We call the respect and advancement of the rights, status and dignity of migrant domestic workers through the implementation of the recommendations outlined in MFA뭩 밨egional Campaign on the Recognition and Protection of Domestic Work as Work?/SPAN>.  These recommendations include the adoption of standard employment contracts recognizing the labour rights of domestic workers and the establishment of protections national laws and removal of discriminatory policies.  



We call for all countries to ratify and implement the core human rights conventions of the United Nations and the conventions of the ILO that relate to the protection of migrant workers, particularly the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families and CEDAW and GR 26 as well as the ILO Conventions on Migration for Employment and the Migrations in Abusive Conditions and the Promotion of Equality of Opportunity and Treatment of Migrant Workers (ILO Conventions 97 and 143).  



We call for the Global Forum on Migration and Development to be conducted under the UN auspices which establishes the discussions of the Forum as multilateral and the commitments as a binding.



We of Migrant Forum in Asia in commemoration of the 6oth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights renew our call and commitment to continue the struggle for Human Rights and Dignity for ALL Migrants; to live, work, and struggle with the migrants and marginalized; to promote the universality and indivisibility of human rights for all. We call on peoples everywhere to join us in this struggle and celebrate on this day our common humanity.



MFA is a regional network of non-government organizations (NGOs), associations and trade unions of migrant workers, and individual advocates in Asia that are committed to protect and promote the rights and welfare of migrant workers. It is guided by a vision of an alternative world system based on respect for human rights and dignity, social justice, and gender equity, particularly for migrant workers.



Statement for the International Migrants Day
18 December 2008
  

Migrant workers shall suffer the brunt of globalization-induced crisis
Grassroots migrants shall be ready to intensify our struggle for our rights


Neo-liberal globalization has forced us to migrate and become commodities for sale by sending countries and cheap laborers for the receiving ones. Now, as neoliberal policies induced another global recession, we are again made to carry the brunt of the crisis.

Slowly but surely, the crisis that started in the United States is spreading throughout the world. Considering the US?position as the global economic master, it is understandable that many of the countries where migrants are working right now and countries where they come from are starting to feel the impacts of the crisis that are expected to intensify in the coming months.

The current recession is but an explosion of the crisis brewing for years. The crisis of overproduction inherent in the economy of the global centers ?US, European Union and Japan ?and hastened by neoliberal globalization policies, has become more uncontrollable than before. Concentration of finance capital to a few multinational banks and corporations through massive speculation has become more intense and made the crisis imminent.

Even the wars of aggression and occupation that the US led and joined in by many capitalist countries have failed to salvage the capitalist system from collapsing. In fact, these wars justified in the name of 밶nti-terror?have further aggravated the condition in the world as profit became more highly-concentrated while more and more people were displaced.

Now, various countries scramble to save their failing economies with whipped up solutions that are evidently targeted to save big businesses at the expense of the people and the workers who have long been victims of the very roots of this crisis.

The oppressed and disadvantaged classes and sectors that include the migrants did not cause the global crunch and yet, will be forced into more hardships. Indeed, what is just and right has no place where imperialists rule.

Global crisis spells crisis for migrants?rights

Job security and wage of migrants are the most immediate casualties of the economic crunch.

The more recent cases of these are as follows:


More than 70 workers from Advanced Semi-Conductor Engineering Co. Ltd (ASE) in Taiwan were laid off. Reportedly, about 1,000 more are set to be sent home very soon.
In Macau, 400 Filipinos have already been fired from their jobs in the construction industry while about 12,000 migrants working in casinos have been told that their contracts will not be renewed.
In the property sector in the United Arab Emirates, about 500 migrants already lost their jobs while thousands more are set to lose theirs in the construction industry in various countries within the Gulf region.
Member organizations of the IMA in Australia have reported that many temporary foreign workers are being made redundant.
In Canada, 70 Mexican and Jamaican temporary foreign workers were fired by the Rol-Land Farms ?a private industrial-agricultural corporation.
In the US, immigrants are losing their jobs and the little properties they own. Who can forget June Reyno, a Filipino immigrant who tied herself to her house after being issued an eviction notice due to the property slump?

In addition to this, the wage of migrants shall surely again be attacked. This was exactly what happened during and after the 1997 Asian Financial crisis. Wage of migrants in Korea, for example, dropped from US$750 to US$300 while foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong suffered two wage cuts ?US$25 in 1999 and US$52 in 2003.

Undocumented migrants shall also be gravely impacted by the recession. For the past years, many countries have conducted widespread and violent crackdowns such as in Malaysia and South Korea. The European Union is also poised to implement its return directive policy by next year that is expected to target tens of thousands of undocumented migrants in the region.

But the impacts of the global economic problems are not restricted to the host countries. In fact, it may even be more severe in sending countries like Philippines and Indonesia whose economies are very dependent on the advanced capitalist countries like the US.

For sure, the governments of sending countries shall again turn its eye to the very profitable business of labor export.

This is not surprising considering that labor export brings in billions of US dollars worth of remittance to these countries and billions more profit from government charges on top of curbing unemployment inside the country. Both the Philippine and Indonesian governments have already expressed their intention to double their target deployment of their nationals to other countries.

Just recently, the Philippine government has proposed to implement a mandatory psychiatric test. While hypocritically claiming that it뭩 for protection of Filipino migrants, the truth is that it shall only be an additional financial burden to them and its ultimate goal is to make Filipino migrant workers more attractive to foreign businesses.

Governments of sending countries have tried to placate the restlessness of their people by promising their readiness to face the crisis. This, however, is mere bravado as the economies of these countries are highly-dependent to those of the capitalist centers. Their so-called readiness will soon be revealed as nothing but readiness to impose more severe taxation to the people, drastic cuts in the budget for social services, even more wanton implementation of neo-liberal globalization and more aggressive exportation of labor. In fact, what these countries, like Philippines and Indonesia, are doing now is to forge more bilateral agreements with labor-receiving countries to ensure the continued sale of migrants as cheap labourers.

The way forward for the migrants

These developments and more that will surely come will be faced squarely by the organized grassroots migrants.

The rights of migrants have never been respected. The second Global Forum on Migration and Development held last October in Manila, Philippines showed the hypocrisy of sending and receiving countries as they tackle the so-called rights of migrants but are actually concretizing steps on how more income can be generated from migration and migrant labor.

The International Migrants Day is a most opportune time to expose the condition and concerns of migrant workers. The more than 110 members of the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) from 25 countries are gearing up for various actions that will highlight issues of migrants of various nationalities as a sector.

In this light, the IMA calls on to its members and supporters to:
  
1. Launch actions that will highlight the issues of job security and wage of the migrants. Policies that make these rights vulnerable to attacks must be targeted while remaining vigilant over new ones that governments will cook up. Give particular attention also to the plight of undocumented migrants.
2. Conduct a massive education campaign among migrants on the roots and causes of the current global recession. Neoliberal globalization must be further exposed and concretized to the migrants to intensify our opposition against them.
3. Aggressively organize migrants in the grassroots. Only the collective will and actions of the migrants can be our effective weapons against the onslaught of attacks to our rights that are sure to come.
4. Gather the broadest unity with other migrant organizations and advocates for the campaigns that we shall conduct.
5. Unite in solidarity with the local workers and other oppressed classes and sectors in host countries by establishing coalitions with their unions and federations that will serve as shields against neoliberal globalization뭩 attacks to our rights as workers and oppressed peoples in the host country.
6. Integrate our movement overseas with that in our respective home countries to advance the struggle against imperialism and for genuine democracy, human rights and social justice.

In the coming months, migrants are to face hardships never seen before. It will show how right the people are to oppose neoliberal globalization policies. It will show how imperative it is to do actions for social justice and human rights. It will show how migrants are part of the struggle for change.

Through militant struggles, we can overcome and build a world that we and our people deserve.#

For reference:   Eni Lestari
                        Chairperson, Tel. No.: (852) 96081475