Adopt comprehensive migration policies *African countries urged

Page 31: May 27, 2008.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE Director of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), Ms Elizabeth Adjei, has called on African governments to adopt comprehensive migration policies that will address the challenges facing migrants and citizens of receiving states.
She said such a policy should include legislation and programmes to educate not only the citizenry of receiving states but also the migrants.
Such a framework, she said, must address potential sources of migratory flows, structural causes of migration, absorption capacity of states, as well as integration issues in receiving states.
“Migration has become part of globalisation and populations need to understand the impact, complexities of the phenomenon, issues that are involved in integration and how to deal with them,” she said
Speaking to the Daily Graphic following the xenophobic violence and anti-migrant sentiments in South Africa, Ms Adjei explained that migration was a growing global phenomenon, particularly in Africa, which could only be managed if proper policies were in place.
She said migration was linked to escape from poverty, and seeking opportunities and security for families, which no state could stop.
“Many people move to improve their livelihood options, seek opportunities and to escape poverty. Other reasons for movement of people include forcible displacement or coercion as a result of wars, violent conflicts and human rights abuses and discrimination,” she explained.
She said attacks on innocent migrants would not stop the phenomenon and should, therefore, be condemned.
“For most people in Africa, migration has become a necessity for security, education, employment and an avenue to realise their aspirations,” she said.
She said most of the migrants were young unemployed people from relatively poor countries moving for relatively better prospects and perceived prosperity for themselves and their families.
“They are often accused of stealing jobs and competing with indigenes for other resources and public goods. But this is often a reflection of frustration and resentment with their own governments, which are taken out on migrants, seen as easy targets,” she said.
She said migrants had a right to go from place to place to seek better conditions of life and also had the right to be protected by receiving governments.
Ms Adjei said governments had the right to control the level of migration through policies and legislation in a measured way, but the absence of such a regulatory framework would make citizens think they had a responsibility to curb what they consider as a threat to their security or economic well-being.
“While there has been greater integration of the global markets for goods and services, for which the international community has devised rules and regulations for flows across borders, there has not been the development of concomitant rules and regulations to effectively and efficiently facilitate the flow of humans within the global market framework,” she said.
As a result, she said, there had emerged a phenomenon of irregular migration where migrants were exposed to serious abuses and exploitation including human smuggling and trafficking and other trans-national crimes that threaten the security of sovereign states.
“In the name of preserving the security of the state, the detention of illegal migrants without due process is on the rise globally. The imposition of more stringent visa requirements for certain groups have been rampant and contributed to a climate of intolerance,” she added.
Ms Adjei said every country should have a migration legislation in place and also ensure the enforcement of its laws so that those who breach the laws would be dealt with while vulnerable migrants were protected.
“A deliberate and comprehensive policy framework and management are required to leverage migration as a vehicle to secure national interests,” said.
She said it was important that countries and their populations were sensitised to the migration cycle to enable them to appreciate the motivation for migration.
She admitted that the presence of migrants could cause tensions, especially in countries with high unemployment rates.
Besides, she said, some migrants could undermine a country’s culture, security, human rights, cohesion and other development issues of receiving countries.
Ms Adjei said it was for such reason that some countries insist that migrants to their countries must learn the language and culture before moving in.
She said the bad management of migration could lead to conflicts and disintegration of states.
She said the rights of migrants did not also cease just because they were migrants.