Effects of Migration to the
North
By MIGUEL CONCHA, OP
(Article published in the newspaper “La Jornada” –
December 17, 2005)
The last week
in November, I participated in a seminar organized by Dominican
men, women and laity from Mexico and Central America in El Salvador
about migrations and work, After hearing testimonies about the suffering
of the migrants, and considering with an ethical responsibility
the studies of specialists in this area, at the end, a declaration
was sent out that analyzes some of the principal causes of this
massive phenomenon, that cannot be other than economic policies
imposed on our countries more than20 years ago, and the hypocritical
policy of contention on the part of the administration of the United
States, especially since September 11. “For the Mexicans and
Central Americans” says the text, “the migration to
the north manifests an imperial policy that takes advantage, with
no consideration of the comparative inequality of salaries and benefits,
of our inexpensive handiwork in the metropolis; of our professionals
who cannot find work justly remunerated in our countries; of the
exploitation for the external market of our economy, and of ourselves
as consumers in our precarious internal markets”.
A later communication made known the social and
human effects of these dramatic actions, such as the helplessness
in which many families of migrants remain; the increase of their
poverty levels, because of the costs of the migration, many times
a failure; the consequences that all this has on the human development
of its members; the repercussions that it has for a family living
and social and peaceful harmony; the lack of incentives to overcome
this, for being attached to the remittances that can come to them
from the one outside the country; the widening of the circles
of migration, for the greater risks of being able to return to
the north; the increase of migration of women and children in
the last few years , with the uncertain hope of being able to
reach their loved ones; the indefinite abandonment of possible
sources of work in their own countries, equally in the city, as
in the rural area; the uncertain future of our economy and the
greater loss of independence of our countries. All this motivated
also by absence of integrated migratory policies and autonomy
on the part of governments, that to the contrary, find in migration
the escape valve that liberates them from social responsibilities,
for the lack of an international migratory policy that places
human and social rights of the migrants ahead of the discriminatory
action and little criticism of the United States.
“We assert”, reads the communication,
“that the governments of the peoples affected by migration,
whether country from their origin, as country in transit or as
country of destination, do not have an integrated policy of their
own that attends to these causes, and even less to the harmful
effects for the families and their countries. The government itself
of the United States deliberately maintains an ambiguous policy,
so that on the one hand it foments migration and on the other
hand represses it.” “What is more”, it continues,
“ it seems to us that there is no policy and even less a
policy of its own, and that they only limits themselves, in the
majority of cases, to adding some of their efforts to soften in
part the more scandalous difficulties that the migrants encounter
in their trajectory to the north “.
“So it appears”, they conclude,
“that for them the most important thing is that the migrants
arrive at their destination in the best conditions possible, because
then it removes them of the obligations that they have with them,
assures them a considerable income from currencies and guarantees
them a greater stability in their own countries.” It treats
of the case of countries like Salvador, whose economy depends
on 84 % of the remittances that it receives from outside the country
and whose product above all goes to stop the economic and political
circles that foment it. “Business is a circle”, a
specialist says, “a good part of the remittances come by
way of banks that gain a commission in the United States, passed
on from the population to the supermarkets, properties of the
same bankers; the supermarkets deposit the remittances in the
banks and these loan money to the import businesses, property
of the same bankers, and from there return to the United States.
But since importations are not part of the national internal brute
product, it does not generate an economic growth.” Will
this be the fate that awaits the actual development of the Mexican
economy, already dependent in great measure on the remittances
of our migrants? It depends on the formulations and positions
that we assume in respect to it. For sure is that for the moment
the communication laments the actual situation of the Mexican
government which it qualifies as “gendarme of its own migrants
and of those migrants of the brother/sister peoples of Central
America, hypocritically placed by the US government to take care
of in a discretional and selective manner the south, of their
frontiers.”
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