On International Migrants Day it is important to remember what rights and migration can actually do. Most of the world’s 232 million migrants are living and working with legal immigration status: in jobs and countries that need migrant workers even in tough economic times; taking care of their families; paying taxes and social security; many starting or supporting businesses; and contributing measurably to development in countries where they are and come from.

Being human, every migrant has rights everywhere, and dignity crosses borders. But international migration is a human face with vast expression: at times brimming with hope and success, at others strained with suffering or sacrifice—and often both.

For many migrants, and loved ones with them or remaining at home, migration is the hope of finding decent work where there is none at home; or of developing and using talent and skills in ways that at times may be possible only in a new country. What greatly animates this hope is the inalienable right—and the natural instinct and drive—of any human being to work to become self-sufficient and support family. There is dignity in that, manifestly, and unlimited potential in the marriage of labour and dreams.

But this only happens with policies and initiatives by government, UN, civil society and the private sector that co-responsibly structure safe, legal ways for people to migrate; that promote decent jobs with decent working conditions—first at home; with social protection that recognizes workers first as workers; and treats with fairness migrants and native workers who do the same job in the same place. These policies are solutions: good for all workers; and good for families, communities and economies in countries all over the world. Together with our member bishops conferences worldwide and other civil society, government and international organization partners, ICMC works towards these solutions and sees many of them in place—but also how inconsistently they are available or implemented. In the Americas and Europe, in the Gulf, Pacific and Southeast Asia, we see hard working migrants being repelled and deported by policies that seem to be—and achieve—the very opposite of matching the migrants’ need for work with the structural need of countries in those regions for workers.

Especially difficult for many tens of millions seeking safety, work or opportunity, the human face of migration is disfigured with disdain or indifference:

• by unscrupulous labour recruiters and employers, many of them small businesses and individuals, who exploit migrants in domestic work, on farms, in the construction, hotel and tourism industry;
• by traffickers who buy and sell human beings within and across borders—like work animals, or as sex slaves; and
• by criminals and organized crime engaged in a new level of barbarism against people on the move: human fracking. Like fracking for oil and gas, this fracking also aims to violently squeeze every last value that can be gotten out of nature. However, in human fracking the violence is against men, women and children: being robbed and assaulted without end; raped; being kidnapped and tortured while relatives are compelled to listen on the telephone until they pay ransom; and suffering the forced extraction of organs for sale.

Pope Francis has called for a reflex of mercy! And for commitment; for attention to all of these: to each human being. He has further responded quite personally to boat people and other migrants and refugees who suffer gravely everyday—often in dramas presented live on TV or internet streaming—in the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aden, the Caribbean and Pacific and crossing deserts and other land borders; many of them women and children. Yesterday 110 migrants were rescued from an overcrowded dinghy in the water near Lampedusa, Italy, but some had died along the way. The International Organization for Migration reports today that 2013 may have been the worst on record for migrant deaths: 2,360 men, women and children—over six a day—and that is just the number that we know of.

“Given its new dimensions in our age of globalization”, Pope Francis observes in his message for the Church’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees next month, migration “needs to be approached and managed in a new, equitable and effective manner; more than anything, this calls for international cooperation and a spirit of profound solidarity and compassion. Cooperation at different levels is critical, including the broad adoption of policies and rules aimed at protecting and promoting the human person.” Solutions are within reach, but governments, international organizations, civil society and the private sector need to come together urgently, with firm intent to put more of those solutions in place. Surely we all know that we need to take a fresh and hard look at the causes for so much desperate migration. On the one hand: policies of closed migration channels and hard enforcement that funnel migrants into such life-threatening forms of migration; on the other, the lack of sustainable development and decent work at home that forces so much of this movement.

On this International Migrants Day we need to look harder at what we are seeing, and think and act more than we have. Each refugee seeking safety, each migrant seeking survival or opportunity, is a person carrying first the spark of human dignity. Some for a moment need help—sometimes no more than just to access their human rights. Solutions are within reach.

-- John K. Bingham, Head of Policy

Photocredit: ©  Indian Social Club / Migration for Development Contest