There are a few things to criticize about the new British Conservatives, but none of them are ambiguity. It doesn't matter whether they talk about climate, trade or the conflict between Israel and Palestine, if there is a chance to tighten the rope, they will be there with enthusiasm. In no territory, however, has their self-confidence been greater than in that of migrations, where the leaders tories They are letting the world know that it is international norms that must adapt to their electoral fantasies, and not the other way around. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak intervened before the national-populist coven of Giorgia Meloni in Rome to declare his own war: “The enemies […] “They are deliberately bringing people to our shores to try to destabilize our society.”
The irony is that Sunak is an Oblate of the Sacred Heart compared to his former home ministers, the migrant daughters Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. They are at the forefront of conservatism punk that sets the tone of migration policies on half the planet. In addition to organizing raves like that of Rome, its representatives violently coerce their adversaries, lie through their mouths and have placed such a fan in front of their ideological garbage that it is already difficult to find a center-right or center-left government that has not been impregnated her. The new accepted truth is that human mobility constitutes an existential threat to our societies. A threat in the face of which everything is justified, even what does not fit into our conception flower power of the rule of law.
If you have lived on planet Earth for the last 20 years, you will already know that this argument is not new, but my feeling is that 2023 will be remembered as the moment in which norms and institutions stopped constraining political slogans to start adapting to them. In regions as different from the world as Europe, North America, Africa or Latin America we have witnessed a domino effect whose consequences will be difficult to reverse. The anti-immigration offensive is very evident on the borders of the destination regions, where solidarity is criminalizedand an extended and complex legal industry is having a field day with immigration control measures; and within the countries themselves, where the institutional harassment of millions of undocumented workers and their families is accepted with the naturalness typical of a de facto apartheid.
Few political agreements illustrate this drift better than the Migration and Asylum Pact, about to be approved by the European institutions.
Far from the gaze of voters, the logic of outsourcing of immigration control has converted the routes into true Way of the Cross and has put our governments in the hands of a collection of autocrats and criminal groups that once only would have been invited to The Hague.
Few political agreements illustrate this drift better than the Migration and Asylum Pact, recently approved by the European institutions and of which our Government is so proud. Three years of a true negotiating circus leaves some fundamental headlines. The first is that Member States unanimously share the need to waterproof the EU's external borders. If that means militarize the European border agency (Frontex) and convert it to complicit in state crimes, be. HE they will invest fortunes in talk out human mobility at destination, transit and origin, will be established orwellian systems of personal identification and the idea will be publicized that only hell awaits those who try to access paradise irregularly.
The second major area of interest of the pact is that which has to do with the distribution of responsibilities in matters of international protection. The signatories also agree on the central importance of this point, but here the positions are divided into two tribes: those who will do everything possible to get rid of the responsibility for asylum, but admit that it will be inevitable that the EU will assume part of it ; and those who directly look the other way. In the first group are the countries of the Southern strip, in addition to France, Germany or the Nordics. They are the ones who have designed the outsourcing model, have militarized its borders or have replicated ideas as brilliant as that of “protect” refugees in bellicose dictatorships like that of Rwanda. The other side is that of the Eastern countries, led so far by Hungary and Poland (although the latter could defect soon). For this group, international law only reaches their cousins in Ukraine – although, it must be said, with them Europe has shown how far it can go when it wants – and they have welcomed the new mechanism of fines for those who reject refugees. with such edifying terms as “rape… in legal terms”.
The most striking thing about the new European pact, however, is not what it says, but what it omits. And at this point it is also possible to identify an evil that has spread to other regions of the world: despite the fact that more than 80% of migratory movements are strictly labor-related in nature and that the main destination economies in rich regions face a challenge existential demographic, no one seems to be thinking about how to govern these flows. With the exception of a hardly innovative mechanism to facilitate the arrival of highly qualified personnel and toothless rhetoric regarding temporary mobility and adaptation of talent to the needs of our labor markets, the European Pact on Migration and Asylum is a wasteland. Nothing very surprising, considering that the negotiations have been led by experts in crime and terrorism, not in employment, social security, growth, taxation and the other areas monumentally benefited by people who choose to settle and work in the EU.
The world is becoming a space violently hostile to the diversity and social transformation that migration represents.
The direct consequence of this political imbalance will be the increase in irregular immigration flows—the vast majority of which do not arrive by boat, but by plane—and the hidden competition to attract talent. Because while Fernando Grande-Marlaska crosses red lines on the southern border and Olaf Scholz announces a draconian tightening of German immigration policy, the labor departments of their respective governments perform semi-clandestine administrative juggling to regularize existing workers and attract hundreds of thousands that our economies need, at all levels of qualification.
Replace “Europe” with “United States” and “Germany” with “Chile” and you will find very similar stories, in which it is difficult to know if the immigration policy is more immoral than idiotic. Unfortunately, it's going to get a lot more complicated before it starts to get better. The year 2023 has also seen the coordinated consolidation of these national-populist movements around the world. Some have managed to reach the government or determine parliamentary coalitions, but many have managed to break the cordons sanitaire that the moderate right had imposed on them until now. From the America of Milei, Kast and Bukele to the Europe of Meloni, Wilders, Abascal and Orbán, passing through the ultranationalism of Trump, Putin or Modi, the world is becoming a space violently hostile to diversity and social transformation that migrations mean.
What can we do, besides pray? Frankly, in this field I expect very little from leadership like that of our president, who has assimilated the existing political framework to the point of burying (literally) the Melilla tragedy of 2022 and appointing one of its leaders as top of the list for Cádiz in the last elections. Nor do I expect much from Sumar, who in his pact with the PSOE was only able to include a reference to the immigration issue and it was, alas, support for the European agreement. My hopes are for a bottom-up transformation of this debate and the role that non-state actors can play in it. Because 2023 was also the year in which the Popular Legislative Initiative for the regularization of undocumented people reached the Congress of Deputies. By far, it is the most relevant political process led in Spain by migrant organizations. The norm will be discussed in the coming months and we do not know if the parliamentary groups will have the courage to rescue from the subcitizenship to more than 400,000 women, children and men who live, work and dream in our country. Whatever they do, this initiative has already changed history and that is also a reason to remember this year.
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