Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
13 JANUARY 2004
DR NICHOLAS
VAN HEAR,
DR CECILIA
TACOLI, MS
CATHERINE BARBER
AND MR
RAM CHANDRA
PANDA
Q100 Hugh Bayley: To move the discussion
on, what more could the UK do to put a stop to trafficking and
smuggling of people into the UK? What purchase does the UK have
on efforts to prevent trafficking and smuggling of individuals
between developing countries?
Ms Barber: Perhaps I could address
the first question. In terms of trafficking and smuggling into
Europe and into the UK, one of the reasons that smuggling in particular
happens is that there are so few legal routes for entry. In terms
of people who want to come as economic migrants or even as asylum
seekers, I think that recent research for the Home Office found
there was strong evidence that measures aimed at preventing access
to the EU had "led to growing trafficking and illegal entry
of both bona fide asylum seekers and economic migrants"[1].
I am not saying that all trafficking and smuggling is due to restrictions
on entry, but that is one aspect of it. So I think that having
routes for regular economic migration, managed migration, would
reduce that problem.
Q101 Hugh Bayley: More widely, do you
have views about the smuggling and trafficking of people into
developed countries? Then let us look at the South-South problem.
Dr Van Hear: It is obvious that
if you increase the restrictions, as Catherine mentioned, on people
moving and they are still desperate to move, for whatever reason—for
economic betterment or to escape conflict—that will drive
up the premiums that smugglers charge. People are still going
to use those routes. Somehow that vicious circle of inflating
smugglers' charges and people ever more desperate to get into
countries has to be broken.
Q102 Hugh Bayley: So what is it you drive
up by immigration controls? The price?
Dr Van Hear: Yes.
Q103 Hugh Bayley: Or the number? You
seem to be suggesting that the price is driven up by restrictive
immigration policy.
Dr Van Hear: Yes, because refugees
and migrants have to find new ways to navigate the system.
Q104 Hugh Bayley: Catherine is suggesting
that the numbers are driven up—I think that is right.
Dr Van Hear: By trafficking? No,
I do not think so.
Ms Barber: I am saying that people
who would enter legally as asylum seekers, for example, are forced
to enter illegally, and that may be a cause of smuggling. I do
not think that is necessarily a question of numbers; it is a question
of how you enter.
Q105 Hugh Bayley: It seems that you are
saying rather different things. You are saying, "Let 100,000
people in as economic migrants and you will reduce substantially
the numbers who are trafficked", but maybe you would just
have the effect that Nicholas is suggesting and—
Dr Van Hear: I do not think they
are contradictory propositions. What Catherine has argued, in
terms of the work permit system that the UK Government has just
introduced, for example that will relieve some migration pressure
and therefore maybe reduce the premium on smugglers' charges.
I was going to give you some evidence in the Sri Lankan case,
with which I am familiar, and also Somalia. You can see quite
clearly an inflation of the fees that are being paid to agents
and so on. In the mid-1990s the amount paid to be smuggled to
the UK or to Europe by Sri Lankan Tamils was about £5,000.
It is now £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000—or
dollars.
Q106 Hugh Bayley: You talk about the
economic imperative. Do enforcement measures, better catching
of trafficking gangsters, have much of a part to play in affecting
the numbers of people trafficked?
Dr Van Hear: I have no brief for
the smugglers or traffickers, but those measures are also going
to drive up costs for people to migrate. In turn, that means that
only the relatively wealthy can access the asylum system. I think
this point has been made before in the submissions to the Committee.
The poorer sections of the populations in conflict-ridden countries
cannot access the asylum system. They can only move internally
or maybe get into a neighbouring country. So there is a built-in
unfairness there in terms of access to the asylum system.
Q107 Hugh Bayley: But 'twas ever thus.
If you had legal economic migration for people from areas suffering
conflict, it would be the better-off, the better-skilled—because
it still costs money to move.
Dr Van Hear: But if the purpose
of the asylum system is to give people protection, to me it seems
rather wrong for only the rich to be able to access that system.
Q108 Hugh Bayley: What proportion of
people who are trafficked are escaping persecution as opposed
to economic migration? It seems to me that if somebody is fleeing
persecution, you do not cut some great deal at a cost of $10,000
with some trafficker.
Dr Van Hear: A distinction has
been made between trafficking on the one hand and smuggling on
the other. The terms have been mixed up in the past, but trafficking
now usually refers to some kind of coercion—for child prostitution,
for female prostitution, or whatever—where the person trafficked
does not know their fate; whereas smuggling is seen as a less
coercive form of migration, which still involves payment and may
indeed involve exploitation, but it is a slightly different circumstance.
Ms Barber: I wanted to highlight
the US-Mexican border experience, where there has been an enormous
amount more expenditure on enforcement, catching people and throwing
them back out. The size of the US Border Patrol more than doubled
between 1993 and 2000, while the Immigration and Naturalization
Service Border Enforcement Budget nearly tripled between 1995
and 1999 alone. The experience has been that people have tried
to enter several times, and eventually they will probably get
across. They will just have to try more times. Also, putting all
the defences in the border towns has caused migrants to go further
out along the border, into difficult terrain, and there have been
more deaths that way. There were around 400 known migrant deaths
on the border in 2000, while fees demanded by "coyotes"
(professional people smugglers) in San Diego, for example, rose
from around $300 to as much as $1500. So I do not think that,
in that situation, more spending on enforcement has really had
the positive effect that was hoped for.
Q109 Hugh Bayley: What about the issue
of South-South trafficking? There have been stories recently of
trafficking in West Africa—child trafficking of labour for
cocoa plantations. There was a ship that seemed to be going up
and down the West African coast. What measures could be taken
by Britain specifically, and other developed countries, to address
those problems? Should we be addressing those problems?
Dr Tacoli: To be even more specific,
it is useful to distinguish between different types of trafficking.
It is also useful to look at trafficking as something which involves
working conditions and exploitation at the other end, once the
movement has been completed. A lot of trafficking, for example
in south-east Asia, is across borders in forest areas—for
example, from Vietnam to Cambodia to Thailand. I think that there
is absolutely no doubt that the labour market is one which is
fuelled predominantly by Western demand for cheap sex services
in Thailand. This is certainly something on which there is the
opportunity, and probably the duty, for Western governments to
act—on this type of sex tourism—and there are initiatives
already in place. More support to Southern governments who are
very much engaged in trying to stop this sort of trafficking—there
it is probably a matter of encouraging and supporting the sharing
of lessons and experiences within a regional context. The other
thing is that to some extent this also concerns labour markets
in high-income countries. There was something in the Guardian
newspaper today about the death of a Chinese worker. It could
be said that this man was trafficked, because he was then forced
to work in working conditions which are not acceptable within
Europe. So the enforcement of the existing legislation on working
conditions for migrants and non-migrants, legal and illegal migrants,
whoever it is, is also very important—and to detach this
from the migration issue to some extent.
Q110 Hugh Bayley: You were saying both
in developed countries and in developing countries, so which agency
is in the lead on it? Is it the ILO? Which international agency?
Dr Van Hear: ILO have addressed
these kinds of movements. I do not know so much about South-South
movements. I would have to check on that.
Q111 Hugh Bayley: What you are arguing,
Cecilia, is that the unacceptable type of migration exists where
somebody, either voluntarily or because of some deception, has
been moved into a situation from which they cannot escape. They
do not have the money to go home and maybe do not have the papers
to go home. They do not have the contacts. These are labour rights
issues in many cases. It is not necessarily a lock and key, is
it—although in some cases it is? How should developed countries
attempt to address those issues in Thailand, say? I am not so
much talking about the sex worker. Or in West Africa? How would
you deal with the employment conditions, social conditions, and
racism maybe, in the recipient country that disempowers migrants?
Dr Van Hear: In the case of specific
products like carpets, in the manufacture of which children are
involved, sewing baseballs, baseball caps and so on, there are
mechanisms that could be pursued. You could require some kind
of inspection mechanism or monitoring mechanism to eliminate child
labour, to ensure that child labour is not used in the manufacture
of those products that are imported.
Q112 Hugh Bayley: So it would be us aiding
the domestic government to enforce some legislation.
Dr Van Hear: Yes. It may not be
very successful—but some such enforcement might help.
Q113 Hugh Bayley: There may not be co-operation
from the host government.
Dr Van Hear: Yes, that is what
I mean.
Q114 Hugh Bayley: Sewing baseball caps
is better than no employment.
Dr Van Hear: Yes. For the people
themselves who are employed.
Q115 Mr Davies: Ms Barber was saying
that one of the major factors driving human trafficking and smuggling
was the absence of legal channels for entry. Surely the problem
is that there is such pressure from the five billion people or
so in the developing world to join the less than one billion people
who live in the developed world that any conceivable system of
legal immigration into the US or the European Union would not
be sufficient even to begin to cope with the demand? So you would
still have virtually the same degree of pressure and virtually
the same problem.
Ms Barber: I take your point.
First of all, we can count out a large part of the five billion,
because they just do not have the resources to move at all. I
put the 2.8 billion who are living under $2 a day in that category.
If you look at where people are being trafficked and smuggled
to the EU from, a lot of it is from the European periphery. If
you are looking at workers or people who are smuggled or trafficked
from Ukraine or from the Caucasus, I think that it is not inconceivable
that you could have temporary migration schemes which would address
some of those pressures.
Q116 Mr Battle: Could I focus on the
rights of migrants, even within internal migration? In terms of
the status of migrants, if they do not have any legal status or
quasi-legal status, if they do not have access to health care,
education, land rights—particularly if they are temporary
or seasonal migrants—what kinds of pressures does that put
on to increase migration or to decrease it, and what does it do
for development? In two of the submissions—I think in the
ODI submission—there was reference to the inability of migrants
to claim access to education, health care, water and sanitation.
They suggested that the use of ID cards might be explored. The
submission from the International Institute for Environment and
Development highlighted the question of migrants' rights in relation
to land rights and access to services. How does that configure
in the whole picture and what should we be doing about it?
Dr Van Hear: May I clarify? Are
you talking about the status of migrants in destination countries?
Q117 Mr Battle: Yes.
Dr Van Hear: In developed countries.
Q118 Mr Battle: We had some evidence
that within India they do not have the same rights as they move
from one state to another. Should we try to campaign that everybody
gets the same rights? What would it do? Would that then stop migration?
Would it increase development? If we are looking at the development
of migrants, if they do not have access to health care and education,
then presumably we put programmes in.
Dr Tacoli: This is quite a complex
question and there are several aspects to it. First of all, yes,
the rights of migrants at destination are very often linked to
better information on what their contribution is to local economies
at destination—for example, to urban economies. In Vietnam
it is still the case. I would say that quite generally the rural-to-urban
migrants are perceived as being on the fringes of the urban economy,
using services without really giving anything in exchange. I think
that in general on migration, and especially with regard to internal
migration, there is not enough information on what the contribution
of migrants is at destination. There is a little evidence here
and there. We know that migrants do provide low-cost services
which are for emerging middle classes in low-income countries,
for example, and in urban areas. We also know that migrants will
move where there are economic opportunities. The rates of unemployment
or under-employment amongst migrants are usually much lower than
amongst non-migrants. So it is very difficult to think that they
are not contributing and so, because of that, their rights should
be recognised. Again, it is something which involves recording,
a certain bureaucratic capacity, and access to information—which
probably needs to be supported in low-income countries. The other
issue was access to assets for migrants in their home areas. I
think that this is very important. To some extent it is also important
to distinguish migration as a strategy to improve people's livelihoods:
either the migrants' own livelihoods or the extended household,
including the part of the household in the home area, or as a
strategy just to make a living and survive. To a large extent
this then relates to the capacity of being able to invest in assets
which are in home areas. One thing we have learned in the past
20 years in development is that what really strengthens people's
livelihoods, what makes them survive risks, including climatic
disasters or conflict, is the capacity to diversity those sources
of income. In this perspective you can see migration as one form
of diversification, but there must also be others. For example,
migrants coming from small farmer economies, which are now pushed
out by more national and international agricultural policies,
are losing one part of this diversification. It is very important
to look at this broader picture.
Q119 Mr Battle: What should the UK be
doing to enhance the rights of migrants in developing countries?
Campaigning or providing services? What is your view on what we
should be doing?
Dr Van Hear: Perhaps I may back
up what Cecilia said, and this perhaps indirectly answers your
question. There is growing evidence from various pieces of research
that secure status in the destination country—it does not
have to be citizenship, but secure residence—forms a basis
for migrants to provide development inputs to their home countries,
both in terms of remittances, investments and so on, but also
that they are more prepared to return to their home countries
if they are guaranteed a secure status in the destination country.
In terms of development, therefore, secure status in the destination
country can promote those kinds of inputs, both in terms of the
capacity to direct remittances and so on, and the willingness
to do so. To backtrack to Mr Davies' point about migration pressure,
it is perhaps worth remembering that the proportion of international
migrants has remained roughly the same over the last five decades
or so, at about 2% of the world population. So it is not a huge
population that we are talking about. Even though more people
might want to migrate, that is the actual proportion.
1 Home Office Research Study 259, by Roger
Zetter et al Back
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