As chairperson of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, I wish to convey to all the participants and distinguished guests of the Third International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees (IAMR) the warmest greetings of solidarity from our League. This assembly responds to certain concerns of our League, such as those on national and social liberation, development, human rights and of course migrants and refugees.
We wish to congratulate and thank all the convenors of the assembly for their success in preparing and organizing this assembly. We are deeply pleased that some member-organizations of our League have exerted their best efforts and cooperated with other organizations to realize this assembly. The convenors are listed in the information material already distributed.
We are very thankful to the host organizations for having worked so hard to prepare and organize not only the Third IAMR but also such related events as the International Tribunal of Conscience, the round table on social movements and the People’s Caravan to Guadalajara for a mini-IAMR and tribunal to hear the cases of the braceros and further to Puerto Vallarta to confront the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD). Our League is proud of being the partner of the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamerica in sponsoring the round-table on social movements.
We congratulate the host organizations of this assembly for the success of the International Tribunal of Conscience on human rights violations. These crimes have been perpetrated by a combination of corrupt bureaucrats, drug lords and military and involve the abduction, torture and murder of so many migrant workers from various countries in Latin America. It is fine that the tribunal is going to submit the verdict to the assembly.
We welcome and endorse the theme of the assembly: Defend the rights of migrants and refugees against anti-migrant policies! Development for the people, not for corporate interests! Create jobs, root out the causes of poverty! Oppose militarization of borders in the region! No to NAFTA, CAFTA and all anti-people trade agreements and policies! We agree with the objectives of the Third IAMR. It is of high importance that you further expose and oppose GFMD as a tool of neoliberal economic policy; denounce and repudiate the US-led NAFTA and the militarization of borders in the region; mobilize the mass following of migrant and grassroots organizations, institutions and individuals in resisting GFMD; and seek the support of independent-minded governments, especially in the Latin American region, in exposing and opposing GFMD.
You must create a platform for a global campaign to further expose and oppose the pro-migrant pretensions of the GFMD; gather the broadest support for the Third IAMR from the media, progressive forces and respected personages; expand and strengthen the International Migrants’ Alliance (IMA); and develop solidarity relations and cooperation of the IMA with all interested entities in Latin America.
We are highly gratified that since its inception the assembly has confronted the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) in the sharpest of terms. It has debunked the GFMD’s false claims of advocacy for migrants and its deceptive assumption of the “mutually beneficial relationship” between migration and development.
The GFMD is a propaganda mechanism controlled by imperialist and puppet states. It makes migration a topic for periodic palaver among representatives of such states, big business interests and imperialist-lining academic institutions and non-governmental organizations and excludes the migrants themselves.
The fact is glossed over that migration is the consequence of exploitation and oppression of the people by foreign monopolies and local exploiting classes. The sending countries are characteristically afflicted with poverty and underdevelopment. The states of both the sending and receiving countries have no interest in development but in the further exploitation of cheap migrant labor.
The GFMD is dishing out a big lie when it claims that its purpose is to identify practical and feasible ways to strengthen the supposedly mutually beneficial relationship between migration and development. GFMD is merely an instrument for justifying the massive export of cheap labor to the imperialist countries under the policy of neoliberal globalization.
The First IAMR in 2008 in the Philippines exposed the imperialist design of promoting migration under the neoliberal economic policy and demanded that the voice of the migrants themselves must be heard. The Second IAMR criticized the European Union Return Directive of threatening the arrest, detention and deportation for the dual purpose of further depriving the migrants of their rights and further cheapening their labor under the signboard of Fortress Europe.
As the Third IAMR is now being held in Mexico, the US-instigated policy of neoliberal globalization has become ever more bankrupt and the world capitalist system is in deeper depression. The prescriptions for liberalization, privatization and deregulation under the Washington Consensus have been totally discredited. Nonetheless, the rulers of the imperialist states and their client-states cling on to them.
This global depression persists due to the basic workings of the capitalist system and the abuses of finance capital under the neoliberal policy. The public debt bubble has arisen because public funds and tax cuts have been used to bail out the big banks and the big corporations, improve their balance sheets and now and then revive the financial markets but definitely not to stimulate production and generate employment.
The global financial and economic crisis is generating social and political disorder. Having coupled the neoliberal economic policy with the policy of global war on terror, the US and other imperialist powers use the terrorism scare and other reactionary currents to justify the rise of military production and expenditures, state terrorism, the global deployment of US military forces, US military intervention and wars of aggression like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. The imperialists are systematically manipulating chauvinism, racism, ethnic conflicts and religious bigotry and other reactionary currents.
Under the current economic and political conditions in the world capitalist system, the socioeconomic misery and political turmoil in many underdeveloped countries drive many people to become migrants and refugees. And yet in the imperialist countries, employment has decreased due to the economic crisis and the migrants and refugees are being scapegoated as the cause of the crisis and unemployment.
The monopoly bourgeoisie and its worst political agents are systematically generating hostility towards migrants and refugees in order to cover up the real cause of the crisis and combat the rise of the progressive, anti-imperialist and democratic forces. At the moment, there is an intense tug of war going on in the mass media, elections and politics in general between the forces of the Right and the Left concerning the issue of migrants and refugees in the imperialist countries.
Following the baton of its imperialist masters, the Global Forum on Migration and Development continues to draw a glossy picture of the world under the policy of neoliberal globalization. The central theme of the 4th GFMD in Mexico is “Partnerships for Migration and Development: Shared Prosperity—Shared Responsibility.” What prosperity? The GFMD continues to peddle the lie that it promotes a multilateral partnership of the exploiters and the exploited migrants as a key tool for managing migration and pursuing development and reduction of poverty and inequality through migration.
The GFMD slurs over the fact that the global depression hits both the imperialist and dominated countries. It echoes the line of the World Bank that the remittances of migrants will remain more resilient than private investment flows and will become an even more important source of external financing in many underdeveloped countries. The drive therefore is to facilitate migration and remittances. Nothing is said about facing up to the negative impact and consequences of the worsening global economic crisis to the migrants.
The IAMR stands for the rights and interests of the migrants as it opposes the line of the GFMD. As in its First and Second assemblies, the Third assembly of the IAMR correctly assails the lies peddled by the GFMD that migration promotes development and that the remittances of migrants help the underdeveloped economies to develop. It exposes the fact that the remittances are prey to the profit-making of bank monopolies and are merely used to cover consumption-driven deficits of the state and pay for the mounting debt burden.
The vain attempts of the GFMD to misrepresent the global situation and the status of the migrants and mislead the migrants are actually a prod for the IAMR to clarify the situation and issues and what is to be done in order to uphold, defend and promote the rights and interests of the migrants and refugees. The imperialist use of the GFMD should serve to push the migrants and refugees to unite and struggle against the policy of neoliberal globalization and against their victimization and violations of their rights.
We expect that the Third IAMR will systematically discuss a wide range of topics and issues affecting the migrants and refugees, such as the global economic and financial crisis, free trade agreements, labor export policies, remittances, so-called immigration reform, low compensation and lack of basic rights, domestic work, militarization of borders, undocumented workers, trafficking of migrants (especially women and children), biases against political refugees, unfair contracts for seafarers, lack or inadequacy of health and social services, extortionate exactions by governments, recruiting agencies and crime syndicates, social and family costs of migration, family reunification, rape and assaults by employers, disappearance of migrants in transit, forced employment in war zones, and so on.
It is appropriate to convoke the third assembly of the IAMR in Mexico not only because it is where the 4th GFMD is being held. There are several highly significant reasons. Mexico is where we see the failure of the grandiloquent promises of development and better life through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It is the largest source of migrant labor for North America, with 10 percent of its population having emigrated. It is a transit country for all migrants coming from Central and South America.
The US has subordinated Mexico to the Plan Mexico or Merida Initiative, as the security complement for NAFTA. Mexico is where we see one of the world’s most militarized borders, in particular with the US. It is a bulwark of US-led militarization in Latin America. The US is using Mexico to reassert and strengthen its hegemony over the entire region through regional, subregional and bilateral trade agreements and through the deployment of US military bases, promoting repression and provoking armed conflicts.
The US has always coveted Latin America and the Caribbean as a rich source of natural resources. It is also a major source of foreign labor in the world. The volume of its migrants ranks second to those from Europe and Central Asia. It accounts for at least 15.5 percent of the 214 million migrants and refugees. The neoliberal policies, militarization, armed conflicts, and other problems in this region have caused high rates of unemployment, displacement and poverty and have forced many people to migrate in search of jobs.
The people of Mexico and the rest of Latin America resist the impositions of the US. A militant anti-imperialist and democratic mass movement is growing steadily in Mexico. Patriotic and progressive mass movements and governments assertive of national independence and social justice have appeared conspicuously in Latin America. All of them actively oppose the imperialist neoliberal policies of the US.
We are confident that the deliberations and resolutions of the Third IAMR and the round-table discussion on social movements in Asia and Latin America and their successes and challenges would bring about a higher level of common understanding about the problems and possible solutions related to migrants and refugees. We anticipate that a higher level of determination is attained to form or strengthen the necessary organizations and mechanisms for mobilizing the migrants and refugees and the rest of the people in campaigns on urgent issues and, in the long term, to advance the movements for national liberation, democracy, social justice, development, peace and international solidarity.
May I take the opportunity to invite participating organizations in the Third IAMR that have not yet joined the International League of Peoples’ Struggle to become member-organizations and to send delegations to the Fourth International Assembly which shall be held in Manila in July 2011. This will be a significant occasion for ventilating further and carrying forward the resolutions of the IAMR. It will afford you the chance to focus once more on the concern for migrants and refugees, relate it to the other concerns of our League and develop relations with delegations from various continents.
