Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
MONDAY 1 MARCH 2004
DR JOSEPH
CHAMIE, MR
JAN DE
WILDE AND
MR FRANK
LACZKO
Q180 Mr Khabra: We have known that
migration has been part of the life of the human race, though
its character and nature have changed over a period of time. We
have known also that there are large, international organisations
which have been very much involved in migration, such as ILO,
WTO, UNHCR and IOM. Would it be possible for you to answer
the question, what is the purpose of the recently-established,
independent Global Commission on Migration?
Dr Chamie: You are absolutely
right. Migration is as old as human history and I often indicate
that before anyone was born or anyone died we had migration. They
requested Adam and Eve to leave the Garden and they were the first
migrants. Actually, this flow has been going on for thousands
and thousands of years, and it is nothing new. We are dealing
with it now in a more recorded fashion. Several years ago, the
Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, requested one of his assistants
to prepare what he called an internal report, which is now referred
to as the Doyle Report, and I was a member of the committee which
prepared that report. In the report, it has options of what to
do with international migration and development issues, and the
last option which was proposed is the one which gave birth to
the idea of having a Global Commission dealing with international
migration. That Commission has an 18-month mandate. It was announced
in November, it started really in January of this year and it
will go until June/July 2005. It has a number of goals. One is
to raise awareness regarding international migration and development,
two is to identify gaps in knowledge, where they could try to
fill those gaps, and three is forward looking at what next steps
should be taken. Basically, as I understand it, those are the
three major goals of that Commission, and, in doing so, they are
going to have regional meetings in different parts of the world
over the next 18 months and also come up with a report, and they
will be commissioning reports. I attended an expert meeting which
was held in Geneva in January where they met with about 50 experts
from around the world and took, as you are taking, testimony and
views. They have already established the committee, they are developing
a website with the committee members and the Commission appears
to number around 18 members from different parts of the world.
Mr Laczko: I attended this expert
group meeting also and I will give you some information about
that. In terms of the research programme, as a result of that
meeting, the Commission agreed to work on three main themes.
One, migration and development, two, labour migration issues,
and, three, the whole issue of migrants' rights. As Dr Chamie
said, I think the first and foremost goal of the Commission is
to raise awareness about really more the benefits of migration
rather than the costs, so the first goal really is to help influence
the public debate about migration. A central goal of the Commission
also is to work with other agencies. I must mention that there
is something called the Geneva Migration Group, which is a grouping
of the international organisations dealing with migration, not
only in Geneva but also one or two outside of Geneva, at heads
of agency level, which has linkages to the Global Commission and
there will be a kind of consultative arrangement there. The central
goal of the Commission really is to discuss where we go forward
in terms of international norms and the regulation of international
migration, and here there are different schools of thought. Some
experts look at what has happened in the world over the last ten,
15 years, or so, and, although there has been some progress in
trying to achieve consensus in the international migration field,
we see, for example, the spread of what are called regional consultative
processes on migration around the world, informal groupings of
states at the regional level, trying to better co-ordinate migration
policy at that level. There has been a huge expansion in that
activity since 1995, but at the global level it has been very
difficult for states to agree on common action. There is no agreement
even to have a follow-up migration and development conference
since Cairo. Every year, as Joe can tell you, states are asked,
"Do you want to have another conference on migration and
development?" and most of the countries say, "No";
the few countries that do want to have a conference, and correct
me if I am wrong, tend to be the sending countries. We have also
some infrastructure in place which is not respected. The 1990
Migrant Workers Convention is there to protect the rights of migrant
workers and their families. It was ratified only 13 years later,
in 2003, by 20 states, mainly from the south, not from the north.
We have some of the means in place to protect migrants, to regulate
migration at the international level, but is there the political
will to do so?
Q181 Hugh Bayley: Dr Chamie, you
talked about the gaps in the data which are available, especially
from developing countries, and, I would have said, especially
in terms of within-country migration in developing countries.
How much of a problem is that, in addressing the issues? What
can be done to improve the data? If you look at all the other
pressures on developing countries to do administrative things,
should this be an important priority, improving data on migration
rather than data on trade, or health indicators, or something
else, given the small numbers of statisticians and data processors?
Dr Chamie: A very good question.
As demographers, we are always asked questions where we need more
information. We always consider data guilty until proven innocent.
In our office, we do not accept governments' reports, surveys,
censuses and other data at face value. The United Kingdom, or
any country, sends in numbers to the United Nations and that goes
into an office, the Statistical Division, and they report it in
your books. That is what officially the UK may report, or it could
be what Uganda reports. In our office, we look very critically
at those data and we make adjustments, for undercounts, other
adjustments. What we are trying to do is fill in every cell of
any particular country's picture. It does not matter if it is
Uganda or the United Kingdom, we are putting in data. Often we
are asked questions by member states, 194, and we try to give
them a factual basis to answer those questions, then they make
their decisions. Often those decisions are related to the facts,
often they are not. When you ask a question, where the migrants
are, most of the democracies do not count the people leaving,
they count only those arriving. For example, an American leaves
New York, as when I left New York to come to Wilton Park, no-one
asked me really where I was going, there is no card that you have
to fill out. It is only when I go back that they will have me
fill out a card. Questions are being asked. We have to look then
at the receiving countries and compile this information. One question
which was posed to our office was, because a few months back they
were saying there were four million Iraqis living abroad, that
number was broadcast on radio and television and then someone
called me up and said, "Is that your number?" and I
said, "No, it is not our number." I knew immediately
that we had to come up with a number, so, with my staff, we looked
through all the European data, we looked through the Asian data,
we looked at all the countries which were receiving Iraqis, going
back for decades, and we came up with an estimate of 1.1 million,
on average, Iraqis living abroad. Then we would address that.
The questions that you ask, as scientists we want to give you
factual information on what we know rather than bias or guesses.
There is a great deal of information we do not know, especially
in the developing world, how many people are moving, our estimate
of 175 million is based on a number of assumptions. Keep in mind,
when a migrant moves, in many areas, if they go back you may have
missed that event. If also they have children, in some societies
those children become natives. It is a process which is time-bound
and specifically related to that phenomenon. The question of the
relationship between development and international migration,
if we had better data perhaps we could do that. Right now, we
are unable to say precisely what is going on.
Mr Laczko: Every few years a survey
is carried out in the UN system which maps out the extent to which
states are collecting international migration data. You can look
back over 30 years and see that there has been very little progress,
particularly in parts of Africa, you still see empty boxes, "Do
you collect data on migration statistics?" That is despite
the fact that we do have good recommendations, we know what the
statistics should look like in an ideal world, but definitely
there is a lack of capacity. How do you deal with that problem
of capacity, particularly in the short term? There is a lot of
information which, at least when you are talking about international
migration, the states in the south want to know about their nationals
in the north. A lot of the information is in Europe and North
America. A few weeks ago we organised, in Geneva, a small meeting
for 23 governments from around the world. We brought together
people from research and policy in government and we put the Chinese
next to the Canadians and they said, "Well, we have some
common interests here." The Chinese wanted to know more about
their own nationals in Canada, and vice versa, the Canadians
wanted to know more about migration from China to Canada. There
are some ways, perhaps more short-term measures which could be
taken, to promote information exchange. A short-term measure which
could be taken, and I will stick my neck out here, in the UK,
is that, in looking through the evidence and the papers prepared
for this hearing, and I may have missed something, I did not see
a short summary or overview of the current situation in the UK
in terms of migration trends from developing countries to the
UK. Who is coming in each year, what is the profile of these people
who are coming in, what are they doing, to what extent are they
remitting, to what extent do they return to their countries of
origin, do they return after a year, two years, five years? Some
of this basic information must exist already. If DFID, or some
other organisation, could package that information and present,
at least once a year, at a meeting or in this kind of session,
a short report, I think that would begin to raise awareness about
the linkages between migration and development. It would show
that migration policy in the UK is not only about dealing with
asylum issues or labour migration, that there are important development
aspects. I think that could help to highlight some of those aspects.
Q182 Mr Battle: It seems to me that
it is said commonly that globalisation is for finance and not
people, that money can move around the world but not people. I
think it is a bit of a crude view, but at least international
banks get together and get some general rules of operation for
transfers of money. At least with trade there is an attempt internationally,
however rudimentary and unsuccessful, to get trade rules going.
By and large, for the migration of people, there seems to be no
ground rules at all, and yet it is not the case that people do
not move. Quite often, as we are seeing, tragically, at the present
time, people are being used and there are the trafficking in people
issues, or indeed people just being exploited as migrant workers.
I know that, actually last week, the Commission on the Social
Dimension of Globalisation called for a multilateral framework
to provide at least a frame on a par with trade and capital. In
the absence of that, there have been some attempts, I think what
are known as temporary mobility schemes, and I want to know just
what your experience and feelings are about those schemes. What
lessons have both IOM and the UN learned about temporary mobility
schemes, whether it is the Spanish/Ecuadorian scheme, for example,
and can they be made to work in a development-friendly fashion,
or are they just a management tool?
Mr de Wilde: I think perhaps the
major underlying sensitivity here is that most states continue
to regard migration very much as a sovereign prerogative and they
are not prepared to cede any amount of control over migration
to international bodies. My suspicion is that this lies beneath
the disinclination of many states to approve or get behind in
any way another international conference on migration. Accepting
that, for the time being at least, this is very much a bilateral
issue which touches on some deeply-held ideas about state sovereignty,
it is going to remain in that category. The attempts to deal with
it outside, such as the GATS Mode 4 (Movement of Natural Persons
to Supply Services), it is called, though I am not quite sure
what an unnatural person would be, certainly this is some attempt
to get at this issue. Basically, as you mentioned in your remarks,
we are dealing with arrangements between states, between Spain
and Ecuador, or whatever, between the UK and a variety of countries
that may come here on work permits. I think that is definitely
the context in which one has to see it, that it is still largely
a bilateral issue, even if there is some attempt at WTO to consider
the fact that labour is much less mobile than capital.
Q183 Mr Battle: Even in Britain the
commentary at the present time may be bilateral arrangements but
suggesting that the purpose of them is the needs of the British
economy for labour, given the ageing population, so the benefits
are for our economy. Can it be expressed, or is it being expressed,
in any of the temporary mobility schemes, as a developmental instrument,
i.e. it is good for the development of the country from which
the migrants come?
Mr Laczko: Two points. One is,
temporary mobility is often regarded as a very good thing, in
debates about migration and development, because it means there
is return migration, there is potential for brain gain. It lies
at the core of this whole discussion about reversing brain drain.
A lot of the discussion though has been linked to trying to control
irregular migration and it gets mixed up. There are different
categories of people who can be involved or targeted in temporary
worker programmes, and there are different means in different
types of incentives and sanctions which you can use to regulate
such programmes. I can send you a paper which looks at the experience
of a number of countries, and you can see there are a number of
programmes which have existed for several years which do succeed
in bringing in workers for short periods of time and then encouraging
them to return to their country of origin.[1]
I wanted to pick up on just one point that you made earlier about
the lack of regulation with respect to migration. You mentioned
trafficking. That is an area where there is now a protocol at
the UN level, there is now a new protocol signed by states which
provides protection to victims of trafficking. There is also a
smuggling protocol, which is linked to the UN Convention Against
Organised Crime, so there progress has been relatively swift in
reaching international agreement to try to tackle that particular
problem. We are not starting with a completely clean slate, there
are some areas where there is agreement among states to protect
migrants.
Dr Chamie: If I may add to your
questions, Mr Battle. The resistance to people moving as opposed
to goods, a refrigerator does not vote, or the movement of a crate
of tomatoes, they do not reproduce and have children who vote,
so the big difference, clearly, is that it affects the political
system. We have been monitoring for a quarter of a century the
views of governments and policies regarding immigration. Less
than 10% of the world's countries in 1976 were indicating they
wished to restrict immigration. Today the proportion is 40% of
the member states of the UN wish to restrict immigration, that
is the developed countries and developing countries. There is
great resistance globally to immigration because of the changes
demographically which are entailed, particularly the electoral
ones, and the democracies are much more affected, let us say,
than some of the others. The second part of your question, there
are many examples where migrants have come in for short durations
of time that have been very helpful, in particular, the movement
to the Gulf. The Arab Gulf region, Kuwait, the Emirates, Saudi
Arabia and many of the other countries, had temporary movements
of labour and technicians to develop their societies with roads,
electrical systems, telephone systems, communications, hospitals.
Those migrants sent back remittances as well and returned to their
countries, and often they are in a cyclical term. Also we have
seen movements in South-East Asia where similar types of things
come in. Generally these are more contractual and they are going
to return. In comparison, the number of migrants you have in this
country compared with what they have in Kuwait is very small,
and it is the same thing for most of the western, industrialised
countries, the proportions are very small. Those countries could
not possibly conceive of integrating those large numbers, which
sometimes are 50% or 60% of their economies.
Q184 Tony Worthington: Can I move
on to the issue of remittances, which in this study, I think,
has surprised us by the sheer scale that is involved, in comparison,
say, with development funds. A couple of issues occur to me. One
is that it is good for the developing country to get that money
back, but that a lot of it is creamed off, it seems, by intermediaries,
because the transfer system is not as good or as economical as
it could be. Where is that a real problem, and what can be done
in order to ensure that the people in the developing country are
getting the benefit rather than an intermediary?
Dr Chamie: Let me give you an
example. I arrived in the UK a few days ago. I took out my card
and inserted it and I was able to get pounds from my bank account,
which I needed to spend here. I was carrying euros and had dollars
but that was not going to work. If people can do that, if someone
living in Mexico City, a family member of someone working in the
United States, can go to an ATM and, basically for nothing, take
out money from that account, that would assist the family. Right
now the charges are very, very large. Our colleagues at the World
Bank and IMF have been estimating that there is at least $100
billion going back in remittances, and, one estimate is, the charge
is 15 US cents to make this transaction, basically it is free.
Many of the groups that are sending back the money, Western Union,
for example, charges a large amount, and the smaller the amount
the larger the proportion. I think you can do a great thing by
trying to minimise the charges on these things and movements back.
My own personal experience, my family immigrated to the States
from Lebanon and my parents always sent back money to their families
in Lebanon, and it was gratefully appreciated and used for, basically,
human resource development, personal goods, education, and so
on. This money is going directly, often and directly, to the household
and it benefits them greatly, and it has a multiplier effect,
of course, in those societies.
Mr Laczko: I agree with all that
has been said so far. However, I do think this is an area where
there is not enough information and not enough recent research.
That is why, just a couple of months ago, DFID organised a major
conference with the World Bank on the whole subject of remittances
and remittance management. That conference raised certain issues,
such as the need to encourage migrants to open bank accounts,
to provide them with better information about the real costs of
remitting. There are a number of recommendations which I think
came out of that conference. There is now a whole new programme
of research which the World Bank will embark upon to try to address
this whole issue of transaction costs and how to get people to
remit more through formal, reliable, stable channels, rather than
informal channels. I think also we have to bear in mind that remittances
are mainly a source of private finance, going to family members
in a developing country, often not necessarily the poorest people
in that country, or going to particular parts of that country
which may not be the poorest. In the case of Bangladesh, at the
experts group meeting of the Global Commission a few weeks ago,
it was pointed out that most of the money that is being sent back
from the UK to Bangladesh goes to Sylhet, it does not go to the
country as a whole, whereas I presume development aid is much
more evenly spread. There is a challenge there in managing remittances,
certainly they are much more important in terms of the size of
the flows, the amount of remittances has doubled over the last
ten years or so. How best to manage remittances and what role
policy-makers in developed and developing countries can play,
I think, is still something that is rather uncertain.
Q185 Tony Worthington: That is the
other side of it, how to use the remittances not just for individual
family benefit, although let us not underestimate that. It is
about whether any country or any diaspora has pulled off the trick.
The problem with developing countries is usually not money going
back, it is flight, is it not, that the money goes out rather
than comes in? Whether any country or diaspora has mastered the
trick of setting up a fund, or a foundation, or something where
people have confidence that the money will then go into internal
investment in the developing country, have you got any examples
of that?
Dr Chamie: There is a great distrust
among migrants that, once the money is identified, the governments
will tax it or control it or try to do something with it. In the
cases that I know of, all the people want it to go directly to
their families, they want to buy education, they want to improve
their housing, they want to have better nutrition, they want to
have eye-glasses and dental work, and all the things that are
necessary in their households. As we have seen, these are fundamental
to human resource development, and in many countries we have seen
that the amount of money coming in has been very beneficial: improved
housing, improved education and human resource development. I
think you are going to have difficulty convincing many migrants
to contribute to a fund which then will be managed and possibly
taxed again in this manner. Take Portugal, they have a large number
of migrants sending back funds, a large proportion, and those
funds have been used productively. As I said, it does start generating
greater economic activity, because if someone wants to add a room
or a roof to their house then they have to have more supplies,
the roofing industry grows, and so on. I do not know if you would
get any greater advantage by putting it in some development account
where you have economists and other professionals trying to manage
those monies and direct them to development activities.
Q186 Mr Battle: In the papers which
we got from IOM in particular there were two documents, one was
about a programme for the return and reintegration of qualified
nationals, and another was MIDA, Migration for Development in
Africa programme, about engaging the diaspora. I am interested
not so much in the money going back, that is a major issue, but
what about people, do they go back, or stay and keep connections?
I am just trying to get my head round that, in a way. In my own
city, in Leeds, in education, health, engineering, social sciences,
more recently transportation, there are lots of students and post-graduate
and post-doctoral students from African countries, South-East
Asia, it is a magnet, and most welcome they are too, and some
are brilliant students, scholars and experts. The present Lord
Mayor of São Paulo was a brilliant transportation student
at Leeds University who went back to São Paulo. Not everybody
goes back. What is your measure of whether it is a good thing
to encourage people to return or to keep the links here and really
make their expertise be used more widely? Do you have any measures
of the development impact of return migration, or does it contribute
when people return to poverty reduction and development, or do
they just get into the jobs at the top, as it were, and continue
to get what is going and development really is by the side? What
is the contribution of migrants who do not return but keep those
diaspora links, could you take me into that area a little bit
more?
Mr de Wilde: We have had three
major programmes which have tried to encourage the return of qualified
nationals to their country of origin. One was a programme called
the Return of Qualified African Nationals, which lasted for a
little over ten years, roughly from 1990, or so, until the early
part of this century, which returned 2,000 qualified Africans
to Africa. The second programme was one we set up in the context
of the Afghan emergency, which has returned 536 professionals
to Afghanistan, which, incidentally, in its early days, was launched
with DFID money. Thirdly, you referred to the MIDA programme.
That is, I think, just beginning to take effect.
Mr Laczko: It exists now in more
than ten African countries.
Mr de Wilde: That has tried to
deal more with either temporary return or participation and development
even without return, by very short-term return on consultancies
or training assignments, whereas those programmes themselves,
particularly the ROAN programme, were evaluated by the EU. I do
not think, to my knowledge, that we have anything that compares
the return of qualified people and the benefit of that with the
benefits which might occur from staying in a country of destination,
such as the UK. The whole issue of temporary migration is one,
I think, which really would bear a lot more study. First of all,
in countries of destination, I think, temporary migration relieves,
or reduces, many of the political issues to which Dr Chamie was
referring, and with which you all have to deal day in and day
out, and it provides for the return of an embodied talent, if
you will, or experience. The question really comes down to how
do you implement a temporary migration programme? Essentially,
that means, one, how do you get the people that you need when
you need them, and, two, how do you ensure that they go back,
and both questions, I think, need more attention.
Q187 Mr Battle: Is this system flexible
enough? Why I am asking that is, if a person comes as a scholar
to the Nuffield Centre as a health expert and does a course, it
might be a post-graduate course, and becomes a brilliant expert
in the field, quite often, either at the Nuffield Centre or at
the University, professors at the University will point to me
and say, "Could this person's permit to study, to work, be
extended, because they're making a contribution here and globally,
and if they go back they're not pushing the frontiers of knowledge
further?" Is this system flexible enough to enable them to
come and go, come and go, or is it too fixed, and can we alter
that in some way?
Mr de Wilde: I think it is as
flexible as you want it to be, as you design it to be. Of course,
the more flexible it is the more room there is for people to stay,
and that means the benefits from staying are what you describe
but that you do not have people returning to their countries.
It is probably a difficult choice to make, but, again, I think
this is up to individual nation states to make that decision,
how strict do they want to be, how open to extension and exception
do they want the system to be.
Q188 Mr Khabra: I come from India
and I understand better the psyche of the Indians. I have got
not superficial experience of India, I have got real experience
of India, I understand the people better than many other people.
Is there the possibility that people, skilled migrants, can be
encouraged to return to their home countries, because countries
like India, developing countries, need more and more skilled labour?
The western powers, the rich countries, would like to encourage
as many people as possible from the developing countries, and
from some of the poor countries, to come to their own economies.
The question is, is it possible to encourage them to return to
their own countries, because one of the officials of DFID remarked
that people go back when there is something to go back to, and
actually that is true? I would like to know your opinion on what
determines the likelihood of skilled migrants returning to their
home countries, and what can developed countries, such as the
UK, do to encourage the voluntary return of skilled migrants to
their home countries, because that is where they are needed most?
Could, or should, aid be used to support/initiate projects which
could provide employment opportunities for returnees? This is
a big question. I know that people have got a misconception about
these people, those who are skilled people, they go abroad, they
think they can be encouraged, but I am very pessimistic. You cannot
encourage them to go back to their country because the circumstances
are not the same, the opportunities are not the same, the development
of those countries is not at the same level, the standard of living
is not the same, therefore it is a very difficult problem. I would
like your opinion on that, whether there is a possibility of encouraging
skilled labour to return to their home countries?
Dr Chamie: I think, with regard
to India, it is a very special case. It has a billion people,
it has great diversity and they are exporting a great deal of
skilled and trained people whom they cannot utilise economically
or efficiently in their own country. The question—is it
easier to bring back some Indian scholars, or skilled workers
from Europe or North America or Australia?—it is very difficult.
Many of them in countries will want to get their own green card,
or citizenship, so to speak, in that country before they will
wish to go back. Many of them, especially that have daughters
that are not prepared to go back to India or Pakistan or Bangladesh
to live in a society where they do not have the freedoms that
they have in these other countries, would find it very difficult.
Trying to encourage, I think, with financial incentives would
be very difficult. First, the wage differential sometimes is a
factor, often a hundred times more, and you would have to compensate
for that. The people who are going back are going back for economic
investment purposes. If they are in Silicon Valley and they go
back to Bangalore, they are setting up large computer industries.
Indeed, it is very difficult to have someone move and relocate
their families back to a society which is very different economically,
culturally, linguistically, you will find it very difficult. Particularly,
you chose India, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh, it is a very different
region from some other parts of the world, where the differentials
may be more similar and may be easier. For example, if you have
migrants from Turkey, and as Turkey starts developing you may
have people going back to Turkey, but in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
it would be very difficult.
Mr de Wilde: I think it is important
also to make the distinction here between the sort of voluntary
return, or encouragement to a voluntary return, that you are talking
of, and a requirement that you go back. If you are admitted on
a work visa for three years, for instance, at the end of that
three years how strict do you wish to be on enforcing the return?
Do you wish to remain open to exceptions to stay on, depending
on professional petition or parliamentary petition, or whatever,
or do you wish to say, "I'm sorry, three years is over and
that's it"? One example might be in the realm of nurses,
which are needed in the UK and which are brought in from a variety
of less-developed countries around the world. You could think
of this as an opportunity to bring in nurses, both to satisfy
a requirement in the UK also as an opportunity to provide additional
training and experience for those nurses. Also, if after a fixed
period you required their return, perhaps against admitting another
wave of nurses, you could have, in effect, a kind of circular
migration which would answer both the development needs and the
needs of industrialised countries for certain kinds of labour.
Q189 Chairman: One of the things
which has struck us in this inquiry is the size and the diversity
of the diaspora, here and elsewhere, but particularly the UK.
I am looking not so much at India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but,
if one looks at Africa, for a combination of all sorts of reasons,
flight of capital, flight of brain power, the impact of HIV/AIDS
there, a very small number of people can make a very substantial
difference in some African countries. One of the things that we
want to try to get our minds around is not so much forcing people
to go back. I think we know, as politicians, ever since Patrick
Jenkin exhorted people to brush their teeth in the dark, if anybody
remembers that, in the three-day week, that it is impossible to
exhort people to do things which go against the flow of their
natural instincts. Are there ways in which we could help, in the
UK, or other countries could help, members of the diaspora who
would like to go back to what they would see as their country
of cultural origin, or home origin, to make a temporary contribution,
maybe by way of a bursary, or some funding mechanism, because,
clearly, linking in the diasporas, there is enormous potential
there?
Mr Laczko: I am sure there are
a variety of ways in which the UK could take action. In fact,
I think DFID has already commissioned a policy paper to look specifically
at this issue.
Q190 Chairman: Probably because they
know we are doing this and they want to be ahead of the game.
Mr Laczko: Just to take the example
of migrant associations here, which may be working in the private
sector independently, surely Government can help to support their
work and their linkages with their home countries, through, I
do not know, a variety of means. There are other measures, just
going back to the whole issue of temporary worker programmes and
return. In terms of development policy, we need to think about
development policy not just in terms of return programmes but
also creating the conditions for return, the right economic and
political conditions, or at least facilitating the environment
for return, but also there are special problems when you have
spent a couple of years abroad and you have to return. For example,
social security or social protection rights may be affected, your
children may have language problems, and those sorts of things.
Q191 Chairman: Sorry to interrupt
you. The problems are legion, I understand all of that, they go
on for ever. What I think this Committee would like to have some
thoughts on is what might be not so much the solutions but some
ideas for how we can overcome these problems, if only temporarily.
I think we would welcome some thoughts on that, if you have thoughts
on that?
Mr de Wilde: I think really we
are dealing with two groups of people here. One would be a group
of people who have, in effect, permanent residence in the UK,
and they are not here on a temporary visa for X years but they
are here for as long as they want to be here. Here, I think, you
run across, inevitably, a lot of the problems Dr Chamie was underlining,
particularly the income disparity one. The "return of qualified"
programmes that we have run take advantage of, if you will, targets
of opportunity in diaspora communities. They are people who have
reached a glass ceiling, they know they cannot go any further
in their profession and at that point they may think they want
to go back, particularly if there has been a favourable change
in the economic or political situation at home. You can attract
a certain number of these people who are willing to go back for
the price of a ticket and, usually, and more importantly, a salary
supplement, a top-up, which would last from six months to a year,
or two years, whatever the programme might envision. That is one
way of encouraging people to go back, and I think the only one
which actually has been tried in practice. It is a relatively
labour-intensive programme, because you have to match supply and
demand, you have to match the individual's qualification with
a particular job back at home, you have to decide exactly how
sweet the package should be to attract the return. It is a very
individual, labour-intensive and relatively expensive programme
on a per capita basis. It is, however, in every single
case, cheaper than having an expatriate nurse or doctor fill that
position.
Q192 Mr Colman: I was just going
to pick up on that last point, cheaper than an expatriate nurse.
I am honoured to sit on the Council of VSO. That offers very cheap,
expatriate nurses and other professionals across the developing
countries of the world. It has very, very great difficulties in
terms of getting work permits for those cheap nurses to work in
those developing countries. Have you examined, if you like, the
problems in terms of getting cheap nurses from the north, and
exposed, in a sense, these 40% of the countries which refuse to
take cheap nurses from the north, for that substitute other skilled
professionals, who would be willing to work in developing countries?
Have you named names, have you gone through the number of developing
countries which refuse to give work permits to cheap professionals
available from the north?
Mr de Wilde: I think we all know
who they are. I think the question though is, the cheap professionals
from the north are volunteers, they are not nationals of the country.
Q193 Mr Colman: Indeed. That was
why I was doing the comparisons.
Mr de Wilde: They are not there
for the long term. The ideal, I think, is to get somebody who
is a national of that country to return in the field in which
they have become proficient.
Mr Laczko: One could turn the
question around. Does the UK want to recruit large numbers of
nurses from South Africa on a permanent basis, or does it want
to have a temporary programme so that, at some point, those nurses
go back to the health sector in South Africa, bringing back skills
and accumulated experience from their time here?
Q194 Mr Colman: I would suggest that
is a different point from the one you were making. I think it
is quite possible to have a rotating number of cheap, expatriate
nurses from the United Kingdom working for a year, two years,
three years, who would provide the enthusiasm and high skill development
in terms of delivering HIV/AIDS services in the south. Is the
IOM plotting, are you measuring, if you like, which countries
are willing to receive such volunteers, which I do not see as
a sneer, I see it as a very positive thing, people who are willing
to work from the north to the south? Are you doing any work to
examine this, because, the VSO, and I know the same goes for the
Peace Corps, I feel that in most countries actually it is quite
difficult to have a situation where professionals from the north
can work in the south?
Mr de Wilde: The short answer
to your question is, no, we are not doing that kind of research
and we do not have those sorts of programmes. They have concentrated
so far entirely on encouraging qualified nationals to return to
their country, not encouraging conditions under which foreigners
could go to developing countries to perform a particular service.
Q195 Hugh Bayley: I still do not
know where this study is going and I think I have got a problem
in two areas, and let me pick your brains. The first is, it is
relatively easy to tease out what are the development gains which
can come from migration and also what are the development costs
which come from migration. What I do not understand at all is
how public policy impacts on those gains and risks. Can I ask
each of you, if you were to recommend one policy to DFID which
would maximise the development gains and minimise the risks and
costs, in relation to south-south migration or internal migration
in developing countries, first, and in relation to north-south
or south-north migration, what would that be? What things could
the British Government do which actually would change things and
yield a greater development benefit?
Dr Chamie: Let me preface it by
saying development generally is dominated by the economists, they
are measuring it only in dollars and cents and pounds and euros.
That is wrong. It is not the total equation. There are many gains
which are non-financial which are substantial. I will give you
an example. I had a friend who was a migrant to the UK, who was
here for a number of years studying. He worked for a couple of
years and then he went back, and, one of the things he took back,
he demanded, in his country, that they queue up properly. You
export culture, you export ideas, you export democracy, you export
many things which do not have dollars and cents. In my view, there
is a far greater impact than dollars and cents, which is often
measured by economists but that is the only thing they can measure.
The same thing is going on now with regard to the women's role
in these societies. Women come from these developing countries,
largely Africa, Asia, to some extent Latin America, they come
to Europe, North America and other countries, Australia as well,
they see another world. When they return they take back those
ideas and those values. That is changing those countries, politically,
socially, culturally, those are great and you should facilitate
those movements. Many of the developing countries have very, very
immature political systems, democratic institutions, bureaucracies,
and you should encourage those developments which are more representative.
Going back to your specific question, you should try to encourage
the movements of legal migrants and minimise the encouragement
of the illegal. What you have right now is that anyone who comes
in and puts their foot on the soil is not going to be sent back,
and people whom I know, it does not matter where they are, once
they can get in, into the UK or the EU or Australia or Canada
or the US, by any means, they will do so because they know that
the legal system and the government system encourages that. Almost
every study I have ever seen has tried to reduce the illegal flow,
because the message is, once you get in you are in, and those
people who have been trying, applying, legally, to come in, students
and others, you can encourage those students by giving them some
work permits later and then say, "You can work for a few
years then we would request that you go back," because that
was the arrangement. Therefore, I think you could reduce the risks
and increase the benefits.
Mr de Wilde: I think, on the issue
of north-south relations which you pose there, my answer to that
would be to implement a system of temporary, limited-term migration,
which required as a rule return, and an enforced return, at the
end of that period. I agree completely, the migrant is an agent
of change and it is something that we need to study a lot more
of. People who go back after three years or four years or five
years in the UK or North America are going to go back with a very
different approach to things and one which probably is going to
be very beneficial to migration. If you do not get them back they
are not going to perform that function. I think the idea of limited-term
work permits, which are, at the end of the day, when you see return,
if not enforced 100% at least enforced as a general rule, would
be a very powerful tool, not only to fill gaps in labour demand
in developed countries but then to ensure that the experience
thereby gained is returned to countries of origin.
Mr Laczko: I have two suggestions
for DFID, if I may. One would be, at the international level,
I think it is important to recognise that DFID has shown a great
deal of leadership in the whole debate about migration and development.
It is an organisation which, in the last year or so, has organised
major conferences on remittances, on migration and development
in Asia, it has set up a major programme of research, probably
the largest programme of research in the world on migration and
development issues. It is working actively with the European Union
and the European Commission, it is engaged increasingly in trying
to develop co-operation with third countries. DFID has a very
important role, I think, in working with UN agencies and other
international agencies to ensure that the development community
is sufficiently sensitive to the migration dimensions of development
policy, and vice versa. A second suggestion would be that
those dealing with migration, and here I turn to what is happening
at the national level and the issue of joined-up government, if
you are going to manage migration, have coherent migration policies
in Britain then you need to be looking at, I think, much more
forcefully, some of the development implications of those policies.
There, clearly, there is a role for DFID to play.
Q196 Hugh Bayley: Can I ask my other
question, which also shows I do not know where I am going. It
is to go back to the Jagdish Bhagwati argument that we need a
global rule-maker really, an ILO or a WTO, in relation to migration.
If that is what is needed, it must be because someone has ideas
that there are international standards and rules on migration
which ought to be set by some body and enforced by some body,
and are there, and what might those rules and standards be?
Dr Chamie: The Bhagwati argument
has been made by others. The Secretary-General delivered a lecture
at Columbia University in October and he was asked directly did
he feel that there was a need for a World Migration Organisation,
and his answer was, basically, "Yes, but it probably will
not come about in my term." Why he said that, I think, has
been made clear, in his view. I think he sees that there is a
need to work on a topic in an international framework. When we
have anything dealing with mortality or health, you have a World
Health Organisation which deals with that, and you have similar
organisations dealing with other types of phenomena, dealing with
issues, for example, family planning, we have international organisations
which will assist countries in providing contraceptive information,
and so on. We do not have a World Migration Organisation in this
area. Eventually it will come about, in my view. It will be difficult.
What can they do? One, they can have arrangements between countries
on how to deal with trafficking, what the penalties should be,
how to deal with illegal flows and how to return people. I think
eventually it will come about not by the sending countries demanding
such an organisation but the receiving countries, they will want
some kind of arrangement where we can work together in dealing
with this. Will they come to this type of agreement? I think 50
years ago no-one would ever have thought that you could close
down the airport of Toronto because of a health threat. You will
come up with some agreements on such things, and there will be
some types of agreement, how to deal with politically unstable
countries, where you have a mass exodus of people going to another
country, how you can deal with those things. It is just a matter
of time, I think, before we find that out, and I think most of
the countries will find out that there are many benefits from
having this. As we indicated earlier, there are many different
places where issues are being discussed, and we have to distinguish,
of course, between regular migration flows for development matters,
and refugees and asylum-seekers are two different types of issue.
In my view, it is coming about as we have had increasing international
groups emerge in different fields. I think this will emerge also
in the coming years.
Q197 Tony Worthington: We have been
talking very generally, looking for general trends, and we have
not really spoken specifically about, say, particular countries,
although we did to a certain extent with regard to India. I am
wondering whether we tend to look at the general in order to avoid
the particular, because the particular is politically sensitive.
Very fresh in our minds is the recent visit we did to Somaliland
and the situation of Somalia in general. Is it possible to look
at a country like that, with enormous problems, and look for general
trends rather than really there is a particular link between this
country and part of Somalia at least, and that we have to look
at it in terms of what should be the migration policy between
Britain and Somaliland, or Somalia, rather than general? Do you
see the point I am getting at, that a lot of these situations
are unique and need unique policies rather than general policies?
Mr de Wilde: I think, if I may,
that is exactly the reason why, at least for the time being, states
prefer to deal with migration largely on a bilateral basis as
opposed to a multilateral one. I do not doubt that, over time,
probably it is going to change and that they are going to see
more advantage in dealing with it multilaterally, not that, necessarily,
that is going to prevent you from dealing with bilateral issues
but that you will be dealing with them under a larger framework,
the WTO might be a good example of that. You can still have bilateral
trade disputes but they are addressed, if not resolved, in a multilateral
framework. It is true, I think, over the years our thinking may
evolve in that direction, but for the time being I think it is
stuck very much on a bilateral basis and one which, certainly
for the time being, does not show much sign of budging.
Dr Chamie: There are some movements,
because, now, with the EU enlargement, you are going to have to
come up with a common policy, and that policy will demand that
you have not only bilateral between the UK and countries like
Egypt and others, you are going to have to have a regional or
global, and it will come about. The same thing with NAFTA, in
North America, and the same thing in the South Pacific with those
groups of countries. You are moving to these regions. The countries
you choose though often are very specific, Somalia, Haiti, Lebanon,
Afghanistan, Iraq, those are very special cases, where there are
civil wars or failed states, very, very specific. If you are talking
about other countries which are much more stable, we have migration,
such as, let us say, Egypt or Turkey or India, but very, very
different circumstances. Often what happens is governments react
to problems, regions react to problems and, as I think Frank was
saying earlier with trafficking and other issues, there will be
a great deal of co-operation. It will take a while, I think, before
we move to the other areas.
Mr Laczko: Just to pick up on
the delicate issue of the World Migration Organisation, given
that IOM does have the broadest mandate in this field and is,
in fact, the largest intergovernmental organisation working in
this field, with over 102 member states, I think that we need
to be careful about thinking about top-down regulation. Our experience
has been that you have to build confidence, you have to create
some shared consensus between governments at the regional level
on minimum standards. We have seen that happen in different regional
processes around the world, so that is emerging and you have got
to build on that. As I said right at the beginning, we do have
some conventions which are simply not respected at the moment.
I wonder also, who is to set the rules and standards? I think
one of the first things we need to ask is why are the current
standards not being respected and applied, before we start creating
even more rules, what are the lessons to be learned from the past?
You can create a whole set of additional rules but are they going
to go the same way as the ones which are in place already?
Q198 Chairman: I want to make a comment
on that, before I wrap up. I want to say something to Dr Chamie.
Do not underestimate the contribution the United Kingdom has made
to civilisation by teaching people how to queue. Is not the problem
that, as you said right at the outset, the IOM is outside the
UN family? Therefore, this whole area, I can think of few policy
areas where there are more academics involved than policy-makers,
loads of academics. I was at a fascinating discussion at Sussex
last Thursday, I did not understand any of it, it was about post-modernist
migration, and I am going back this Thursday for a translation.
This is an area where there seems to be lots of university courses,
some excellent academics but very little policy work, and this
is because it falls between asylum, refugees, migration, and so
on. What I think really we are teasing our way to saying is, okay,
that we are not knocking the IOM but one needs something with
the United Nations family, with the UN mandate, answerable to
the Secretary-General, who is going to think across these policy
issues within the UN about what might be best practice. You will
not necessarily get countries to adhere to it, after all, you
do not get countries to adhere to best practice on refugees, small
arms, or many other areas, but at least you will have them down
as benchmarks. I think that is the sense of what colleagues are
feeling their way towards on all of this. I think there is a feeling
that migration has become a bit of a policy cul-de-sac,
which kind of gets missed out, and hence the attention is not
given to it in a constructive way, that attention is given to
other policy areas within the UN family. Frank, would you like
to answer that?
Mr Laczko: I think you are absolutely
right. IOM has reacted to that, in recent years. It put much more
emphasis on migration policy work, but also it has worked with
the Government of Switzerland, which is sponsoring something called
the Berne Initiative, which is a series of inter-state consultations,
precisely to try to identify some of the policy areas where there
is consensus around the world.
Q199 Chairman: We are not having
a go at the IOM, I do not think anybody else is having a go at
the IOM, I think you do jolly good work. I think what really we
are trying to say is, why not in Kofi Annan's watch, why should
you not have a World Migration Organisation, what is to stop us
having a World Migration Organisation within the next few years,
after all, this is going to be an increasing, not a declining,
phenomenon, is it not, for all of us, in how we manage this?
Mr Laczko: Yes.
Chairman: If you went down to the main
chamber this afternoon, where we were discussing the detail of
the Asylum and Immigration Bill, we were grappling with all these
issues. Thank you very much for having come and given evidence
to us this afternoon, and when I discover what post-modernist
migration is I will let you know. I thank you, because a lot of
what you have helped us on, I think, is some substantial detail,
and your policy ideas I think are extremely helpful, because in
politics the practical is always useful, for this Committee. At
the end of this inquiry, we are having to make recommendations
to DFID, and I think it is also good to hear of the substantive
work that DFID is doing already on this, and I think that is good,
because I suspect that DFID probably is in the vanguard of some
of the work on this, which again I think is very helpful and it
is how we build on that. Thank you all very much.
1 See IOM, 2003, International Labour Migration Trends
and IOM Policy and Programmes, http://www.iom.int//documents/governing/en/MCINF_264.pdf;
IOM, Labour Migration Activities in 2002-http://www.iom.int//documents/publication/en/Labour_migration_info_sheet.pdf Back
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