Draft statement on the freedom of movement

Prepared by Marco Perduca

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on behalf of the Transnational Radical Party, I would express all our concern on the repressive and prohibitionist evolution that migration and asylum policies are undergoing in many industrialised and developed countries.

We observe that migrations are a permanent pattern of human life and development on this earth, and we believe that the right of a person to leave and return to a place that happens to be controlled by a certain government should be considered as a fundamental.

We greet the gradual recognition of the right to leave any country, including one's own: after the collapse of the Eastern European Communist systems, people are now almost everywhere allowed to leave a certain country in order to travel or establish somewhere else. This principle has always been a basic right in democratic States. It is crystal clear that the government obligation to stay in a country transforms this country into a prison, and this has contributed to create a strong internal opposition. In this sense, we warn all countries that still do it to rethink their policies and guarantee this fundamental freedom to their citizens.

We observe that some countries have supported emigration, and in some cases have obliged some persons or groups of people - in particular dissidents or minority groups - to leave the country, in order to get rid of an internal problem and discharge it to some other country. We believe that this practice, promoted by non democratic States, has to be condemned, because it goes against individual freedom and minimal human rights.

On the right to seek asylum, the Transnational Radical Party denounces the restrictive policies that some developed countries are promoting. We are extremely concerned on the European Union development of a single European asylum policy that reduces the possibilities for a person seeking asylum to obtain it in Europe. The European Union has promoted the 1990 Dublin Convention, that establishes which European Member State is responsible for the examination of a request for asylum. This Convention will be implemented through the so-called Eurodac system, a database of fingerprints of people seeking asylum and illegal immigrants. The TRP denounces the fact that the European Union has not yet harmonised the criterias that Member States should apply to decide whether to grant asylum or not. In this situation, a person seeking asylum has less possibilities to get it in Europe: she/he is obliged to seek it in a single country - the one where she/he first entered the EU territory -, that could have a more restricti

ve policy on asylum compared to other EU States. The previous system allowed asylum seekers to have better chances to receive asylum, especially because European States have a different interpretation of special social groups that are menaced of persecution and to whom a person belongs. This means that only some EU States recognise asylum for example to homosexuals fleeing from States and communities where sexual orientation is a reason to be murdered, imprisoned or persecuted; or to women that risk to undergo genital mutilations. The TRP underlines that a campaign it is running on this problem asking to all Member States to grant asylum to these women has gathered more than half of the signatures of MEPs, and the EP will soon draft a report on it. Also people persecuted by non-State actors with the active or passive compliance of governments are not granted asylum in all Member States. Prohibiting the multiple request for asylum in the EU, without the harmonisation of asylum policies on a high standard, wo

uld now mean a breach of the Geneva Convention and the NY Protocol on refugees rights' international protection.

The TRP furthermore believes that migration policies in general should be deeply re- thought by States. The study that the UN population division has published some months ago on replacement substitution is extremely enlightening, but has been welcomed by governments with suspect and anger. The EU Interior and Justice Ministers have declared after an informal meeting in Marseille on the 28/29 of July that it is based on absurd hypothesis, and therefore cannot be taken into consideration for their discussions on the shaping of a European migration policy following the remit of the Amsterdam Treaty. The TRP believes that on the contrary the study is absolutely clear and has a solid scientific and political relevance. Developed States need more immigrants in order to fight population decline and to make their economic and welfare systems work on the actual standards or on better ones, granting development and stability. But the international community, in spite of learning a lesson from this study and shape or

re-shape their immigration policies, have completely ignored it or denied its value. States prefer to keep a restrictive immigration policy that causes the rise of illegal immigration and asylum requests, and then to proceed to massive regularizations of the thousands of illegal immigrants that have escaped for years police controls and raids.

In this sense, the negative and harmful consequences of restrictive immigration policies are larger than benefits: immigration policies are not based on rational and long term considerations, as shown by the UN study, to States and by the requests for more immigration by industrial organisations. Migrations on the contrary have a economical and political rationale, flowing physiologically from poor, unstable, underdeveloped and overpopulated countries to rich, developed, industrialised, democratic countries that need workers. Trying to block immigration and making it illegal, delegates the management of migrations to internationally organised mafias that earn consequently enormous profits, paid by desperate migrants. These people, that flow poverty, hunger, death, civil strives and wars, are ready to do and pay whatever they can to reach their objective, risking their lives. In this sense, for every migrants' death, rich states blocking immigration and the mafias that organise the trafficking of human being

s are equally responsible. Many States promote the systematic expulsions of illegal immigrants, that have a high cost for the States' budget, as for the reinforcement of the repressive structures of the State that also harm individual freedoms and democracy. Clandestine immigrants can't then find a legal job, and either get a job in the black market, or are enrolled in criminal organisations in order to earn money to pay back the debts they have contracted for their illegal immigration.

The TRP underlines that, having said that on migrations, a stronger international action should be taken on other fundamental sides: development policies, promotion of democracy and of the rule of law, and reproductive policies. It is clear that migrations in general stem from poor, overpopulated and non democratic or unstable countries. The promotion of fundamental rights and freedoms, the promotion of responsible reproduction, the establishment of democratic state assets, the increase of development funds, a rational use of these, the promotion of an international investments friendly environment, have to be the elements of a comprehensive international policy on migrations.