We are honoured to host this workshop on behalf of the government and the people of South Africa.
We hope you will have fruitful deliberations that will assist the Southern African countries further to harmonise their approach to international migration and to harness it for development.
The advent of globalisation has set the stage for greater movement of goods and services as well as labour. However, whereas the skilled labour force and the affluent are less constrained by receiving countries and the red carpet is often rolled out to them, the poor, low-skilled and unskilled migrants often face enormous restrictions and risks both during travel and whilst in the countries of destination.
Today, among migration practitioners, I wish not to lecture you on a subject on which I think you are quite familiar. What I intend doing is address myself to what I regard as urgent steps we need to take if we are, as a region and developing nations, to forge the linkage between migration and development.
The issue of international migration has prompted very interesting debates everywhere in the world, which, to a large degree, are unfortunately littered with many misconceptions. These include, but are not limited to, that immigrants are responsible for high crime rates; that they rob the nationals of their rightful socio-economic dues and that immigration can be stopped or even reversed.
Arising from these misconceptions, many people thus regard international migration as negative, as something to be combated. At worst, these misconceptions have bred appalling xenophobic violence. Such sad misconceptions are not limited to developing countries which lack the capacity to forge the linkage between migration and development and national security, but extend to developed countries with abundance of such policy and institutional capacity.
Yet immigrants, both regular (legal) and irregular (illegal) continue to grow and no country is immune, and many countries face a pattern of mixed-migration flows with increasing intensity.
The fact is that international migration is an old phenomenon. Many nation states have at one stage or the other for various political, social and economic reasons been affected by large movements of people from different points of origin. Some countries were in actual fact formed and forged by migrants, whether from the same regions or other continents.
Furthermore, there is no country in Africa or anywhere else in the world that can claim to be composed purely and singularly of its original inhabitants. International migration drastically transforms the country’s population, cities and economy. Many cities of the world have become cosmopolitan and hubs of human, cultural and economic interface.
Consequently, nation-building shall continue to be a permanent feature of all societies, which would include integrating the increasing numbers of immigrants, which is vital for growth, stability and cohesion. In contemporary times, migration has become more complex and has expanded and there is little reason to believe that this will slow down in the decades ahead.
For many people in developing countries it offers a way out of poverty for them and their families, as they can send remittances to meet their families’ socio-economic needs. However, for developed countries, immigrants offer an alternative source of people and labour at a time of declining population and labour supply. This is illustrated in the recruitment of skilled labour, especially from developing countries.
Managing migration effectively, humanely and, above all, in the national interest is a public policy challenge which requires a paradigm shift away from viewing migration as a nuisance to be combated, but as a positive process that can lead to the development of the national and regional economy, the improvement of national and regional security, the deepening of our human and African solidarity and enhancement of our diversity.
Public policy shift must ensure that we integrate migration into development strategies and planning and thus take its positive benefits into cognisance. The challenge for Southern Africa, in the context of globalisation, is to develop an international migration policy that seeks to manage migration rather than combat it or let it happen on its own.
Managing immigration requires sound policies that balance promoting the immigration of investors and skilled professionals and that of working class persons. Local entrepreneurs may also benefit from cooperating with and learning from the entrepreneurship skills and expertise of migrants from other developing countries.
Similarly, harnessing migration for development as a regional effort will assist to reverse the negative impact of what we regard as the brain drain, which continues to bedevil Southern African Development Community (SADC) especially in the areas of health and education. The result is that our health systems are badly damaged by the emigration of health professionals.
It will be important for us to develop programmes and initiatives that seek to retain and attract back our citizens for us to derive development benefits from our migrants. The fact is that unless managed better and differently, the so-called brain drain threatens to perpetuate global socio-economic disparities between the developed and developing countries. However, the "brain drain" can be mitigated through various policy measures, which should include international agreements towards this effect.
Governments must also encourage and cooperate with civil society initiatives to encourage skilled nationals to return home to assist with our development challenges. To achieve this objective requires that all government departments and the three tiers of government must each understand their role and undertake their own responsibilities towards migrants. This cannot be left to departments of Home Affairs, interior or immigration alone.
Such policy must be supported by credible data on immigration and refugee situations in the country to feed public discourse and debunk myths, misconceptions and stereotypes. Government must establish relations with research institutions in universities and the non-governmental sector.
To manage immigration also means that the interests and needs, as well as the contribution of immigrants will be acknowledged, whilst acknowledging also those of the majority of the population as a whole. This means that all must accept the responsibility and the outcomes of that process through integrating immigrants.
Migration is about people, and hence there are human rights issues involved. All countries are duty-bound to protect migrants, be they regular or irregular, including those regarded as illegal.
The protection of the human rights of all migrants is a political and ethical imperative in its own right. The protection of migrant workers, equality of treatment, campaigns against discrimination and xenophobia, and encouragement of integration are essential measures for ensuring that migration contributes substantially and positively to economic and social development in receiving and home countries alike.
A priority for all governments is to ensure the well-being of migrant workers and to secure the payment of decent wages and basic safeguards, within the framework of national labour laws, especially taking into account the situation of women migrants who often find themselves in irregular situations, in unregulated sectors of the economy, or as victims of traffickers or smugglers and subject to many forms of violence and abuse.
To manage migration, and indeed in order to harness it for development, government must not try to act alone. The private sector, labour unions and non-governmental organisations must all collaborate with the state to harness migration management efforts. Such co-operation should address the issues of national policy, coordinated implementation and capacity building, and facilitate public dialogue on international migration.
Beyond national initiatives, there must also be bilateral, regional and global inter-state cooperation. This will ensure shared responsibility and shared benefits, especially between sending and receiving countries. The SADC Free Movement Protocol, the bilateral visa waiver agreements and many other initiatives such as the dialogue between developed and developing countries attempt to accomplish exactly this. Such policies also help to re-channel human movement away from illegally crossing the border towards regular entry through recognised ports of entry. This would enable countries to record and regulate immigrants as well as guarantee the security of both nationals and immigrants.
Supporting such management must be a comprehensive border control strategy aimed at balancing national security control and economic, day-to-day migration of ordinary people. Border control does not mean the same thing as immigration control.
Furthermore, the pursuit for peace and stability, development and democracy on the continent is vital to address the root causes of migration and forced displacements, to diminish the push factors and strive to level the pull factors. This alone will not diminish migration, but it will assist somewhat to diminish irregular, undocumented migration.
It is for example in our best interests that there we should all support the Zimbabwean Global Political Agreement so that we could better manage the migration of Zimbabweans in the SADC region, especially in the countries which receive the largest numbers of Zimbabwean asylum-seekers and economic migrants. Many Zimbabwean migrants suffer from all sorts of criminal syndicates and labour exploitation as a result of the unsafe modes of travel between their home country and those of destination. We must support the SADC efforts, both for the implementation of the GPA and the lifting of sanctions so that the country could have requisite resources to spearhead development efforts.
It would be crucial for Africa to find ways to ensure that Africans abroad and in the Diaspora support and galvanise support for the Africa’s development, and invest in Africa through encouraging the transfer of resources, information, skills and knowledge; as well as to mobilise these African émigrés to support African political and foreign policy objectives.
In the absence of political stability and economic development both at national and regional levels, no country will be able to benefit from migration and to guarantee the safety of its nationals. Migration management must not be singularly obsessed with security, ignoring the fact that only development can guarantee the region and every country of long-lasting and durable peace, stability and security.
We need constructive engagement and dialogue on the links between international migration and development, which should also lead to the harmonisation of national policies and regional frameworks.
We must particularly focus on harnessing irregular migration. As we sit today, the Brazilian government has taken drastic steps to regularise undocumented migrants in Brazil. We, in South Africa, signed a bilateral agreement with the Zimbabwean government on a 90-day visa waiver and the special dispensation permit for Zimbabwean immigrants in SA. We also issued a directive that Zimbabwean nationals should not be deported, except those of course who had breached our national law.
Dear friends and colleagues, migration will remain part of our lives for decades and centuries to come. The challenge for us is to ensure that it works for our people and to harness it such that we succeed to move to the new pedestal of development.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
21 September 2009
