UN takes up cudgels for migrant workers

Governments should not use migrants as scapegoats amid a global recession, according to a senior United Nations official.

As the global recession poses threats to migrant workers, Director Hania Zlotnik of the Population Division at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) of the UN, warned that workers are already particularly vulnerable to job cuts during economic crises.

She said it is very important that at this moment there is already a mechanism by which governments can talk to one another about issues of migration and for a forum to exist at the global level because most of the countries receiving migrant workers, are already in recession.

Zlotnik was referring to the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), which was held in the Philippines last October. The GFMD meeting in Manila focused on protecting migrants’ human rights and the promotion of regular migration. The conference also emphasized the point that international migration benefits migrants as well as the origin and host countries.

 “Migration flows are going to be disturbed and migrants are going to share the negative effects the economic downturn is having on the whole population of the world,” Zlotnik said.

Since 2007 there has been an increase in the unemployment rates of key groups of migrants in different countries.

Spain has seen a sharp increase in the number of unemployed foreigners. Between April and June at least 100,000 more people lost their jobs in the Iberian nation, taking the total number of jobless migrants to 280,000.

In the United States the unemployment rate among Hispanics is rising and for the first time in several years the rate of out-of-work immigrant Hispanics is higher than the rate of non-immigrant Hispanics at around seven percent.

“Unemployment tends to affect migrants first. Many migrants in the developed world and also in the developing countries have moved to these countries to work in the construction industry,” Zlotnik said.

“It’s the construction industry that is (most) affected by the drop in real estate prices,” she added.

Zlotnik noted that higher unemployment may have resulted in a significant reduction in the amount of money migrants sent home, with Mexican banks experiencing a four-percent decline in remittances between January and September.