As civil society, international institutions and government policy makers talk, think and act on decent work for a fair globalisation, ICMC recalls that fighting irregular migration with enforcement and return alone is fighting--and losing--yesterday's "war" with yesterday's weapons. If we really want less irregular migration, and less smuggling and human trafficking, we need to increase legal migration channels.

There is growing convergence on the fact that "migration should be a choice, not a necessity", requiring greater levels of development and better organised labour migration schemes. But building systems for labour migration requires far more than just efficiency, and more than simply "opening the door".

In an age of globalised markets and labour, securing the benefits and diminishing the risks of worker mobility requires attention to four fundamentals:

1. New honesty: reality-based responses to global migration.
2. New investment: in addressing the root causes of migration.
3. New decency: bowing to the ILO, its decent work programme and the Multilateral Framework for Labour Migration.
4. New spirit of humanity: respecting the family and dignity of each human being.

Mobile, global and hard at work (159.15 KB)