Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute and it is appropriate we should debate this crucial aspect of European policy. In approaching this issue, it is important to recognise that the economic dimension is not the sole dimension. What is happening in regard to migration globally, at European level and nationally involves much more than the economy, as it also involves the movement of workers and their dependants. The Government does not intend to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. The convention, which has been in place for a long time, has been signed up to by 34 countries but has been ratified by only two European countries, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey. The reason the Government gives for not signing is that workers are entitled to other protections under the Constitution and other instruments signed by various Governments. The importance of the convention is that it recognises that migrant workers are more than labourers or economic entities. They are social entities with families and, accordingly, have rights, including that of family reunification.

A long time ago when I researched migration, I found that Irish migration changed character several times from migration for a lifetime to north America to regular or circular migration to Britain with people coming and going all the time while leaving their families at home, which had clear implications for social policy. More elaborate models than the three suggested — multiculturalism, assimilation and exclusion — are needed and the appropriate model would have to handle circular migration. In today's conditions of immigration, the State needs to ensure all migrants are protected equally from a rights perspective as workers but a more comprehensive approach is needed for their dependants so that, for example, their children can learn the language and mix with children of the same age and older people can rejoin their families. Such an approach would be best structured on a rights basis. It is a mistake that Ireland and many other European countries are not moving towards ratification of the UN convention.

The strength of the convention is that it establishes the responsibility of the international community through the UN to provide measures of protection. Over the past 25 years, the total number of migrants throughout the world has doubled but while we are concerned about the impact on economies and so forth, 40% of migrants are in the developed world with more than 60% of migrants in the developing world, comprising 49 million in Asia, 16 million in Africa and 6 million in the Latin America-Caribbean region. While the movement of people is an economic issue, it is also a people's issue. It is singularly inappropriate for Ireland to draw a distinction between such security the State will provide to workers earning more than a specified income and those earning less than it. The State is making arrangements from a simple and narrow economic perspective, which cuts across the broader rights-based approach favoured by the Global Commission on Migration and the UN and which is most appropriate to Europe.

It would be disingenuous to ignore, when considering the current literature on migration and the doubling of migrants in the past 25 years, that it has not been accompanied by favourable attitudes. In Europe, sometimes issues affecting migrants are mixed with refugee issues and so forth. The number of refugee applications to Ireland has reduced dramatically. However, these issues have resulted in a negative atmosphere in Europe and it is pointless suggesting otherwise. Migrants are affected by racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, which are stronger now than 25 years ago. In addition, migrants are unequally affected by detention measures and other half-baked measures justified in the name of counter-terrorism. In every case, there is evidence that migrants and their families are more vulnerable than other population categories in the context of abuse and deprivation in housing, health and so on.

A proper understanding of migration as the movement of people is, therefore, needed to undo the fear attached to the receipt of people who have many sources of richness to offer us. Multiculturalism means those who move initially and their dependants who move subsequently are secure in their rights and can enjoy all the benefits of their host country.

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