The Hindu : The great immigrant bazaar

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 10, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

The great immigrant bazaar

IT SHOULD HAVE made for the perfect equation. By 2050, many rich countries with low fertility and birth rates will need to have allowed in millions of immigrants to replace their own ageing labour force. Millions of people in the developing world are waiting to meet the demand. But add to this the strict controls in the developed world on the inflow of economic migrants through its borders and what do you get? People from poor countries who will do anything — to the extent of putting their lives at risk — to sneak into the land of their dreams. Rapacious middlemen who will exploit people's aspirations by making illegal immigration sound easy in return for vast sums of money. It has been happening for years. The case registered recently by the Punjab police against the bhangra pop star Daler Mehndi, accusing him of involvement in an illegal immigration racket, has only served to highlight the constantly evolving techniques of this flourishing world-wide business and the ever higher sums that individuals are willing to pay to its purveyors.

Cases of flight from political persecution apart, people emigrate mostly for economic betterment. Even many so-called asylum seekers who wash up on western shores are in fact economic migrants. Pundits predict that with the advance towards a globalised economy, this sort of migration will become unnecessary. Yet, of this planet's six billion people, more than four billion still live on less than two dollars a day, of which more than one billion live for less than one dollar a day. The rewards of globalisation have spread unevenly. And where they have spread, they have whetted the appetite for a better life that salaries from jobs in the Bangalore back offices or call centres of international companies may not be able to meet. Most illegal Indian immigrants seem to be from Punjab, one of the most prosperous States in the country. Evidently, only those who have money can afford the high sums demanded by futures abroad salesmen. The Punjab police say that from the beginning of 2003 up to July, they received 1,909 requests from Indian missions abroad to verify the backgrounds of individuals who had shown up in those countries under dubious circumstances and were detained by the authorities. Hundreds of others must go undetected.

Illegal immigration cannot be stopped. It can only be checked. For this, without doubt, border control regimes in the developed world that seek to keep out foreigners have to first loosen up. In any case, these laws go against the right to work, the right to free choice of employment and to protection against unemployment enshrined in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More than this, the realisation that they could be stranded without an adequate work force in the years to come has already spurred an awareness in many host western countries that their immigration laws need to be relaxed. The sending country also has an important role to play. Here, India, whose shores thousands of people attempt to or successfully leave illegally, could learn from Sri Lanka where the Government plays an active regulatory and facilitating role in economic emigration. It assesses demand for unskilled immigrant labour abroad, provides basic training — including language skills — to potential emigrants, regulates middlemen through licensing and runs a large-scale awareness campaign about the risks of illegal immigration abroad. The courts will deal with the allegations against Daler Mehndi. But the way to minimise such cases is for the Indian Government seriously to address the issues around emigration as a means used by people to achieve the legitimate aspiration of bettering their economic prospects.

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