By Andreas Sandre von Warburg
The United Nations has “serious concerns” about the situation of migrants in the United States, especially in the context of specific aspects of deportation and detention policies, and with regard to specific groups such as migrant workers in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, migrant farm workers, and migrants in detention facilities.
According to a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, Jorge Bustamante, the US Administration “lacks a clear, consistent, long term strategy to improve respect for the human rights of migrants.”
The term “migrants,” as defined by the report, refers to all non citizens living in the United States, including, among others, undocumented non citizens and non citizens with legal permission to remain in the country, such as legal permanent residents, work visa holders, and persons with refugee status.
“Although there are national laws prohibiting discrimination, there is no national legislative and policy framework implementing protection for the human rights of migrants against which the federal and local programs and strategies can be evaluated to assess to what extent the authorities are respecting the human rights of migrants,” the report says.
The mandate of the Special Rapporteur was created in 1999 by the Commission on Human Rights, pursuant to resolution 1999/44. Since his appointment to the mandate in July 2005, the Special Rapporteur has visited a handful of countries. From 30 April to 18 May 2007, the Special Rapporteur undertook an official visit to the United States of America.
The Special Rapporteur, whose report was presented to the 7th Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, stressed that the “United States has failed to adhere to its international obligations to make the human rights of the 37.5 million migrants living in the country (according to Government census data from 2006) a national priority, using a comprehensive and coordinated national policy based on clear international obligations.” He said the primary task of such a national policy should be to recognize that, with the exception of certain rights relating to political participation, migrants enjoy nearly all the same human rights protections as citizens, including an emphasis on meeting the needs of the most vulnerable groups.
The Reports notes that xenophobia and racism towards migrants in the United States has worsened since 9/11.
“The current xenophobic climate adversely affects many sections of the migrant population, and has a particularly discriminatory and devastating impact on many of the most vulnerable groups in the migrant population, including children, unaccompanied minors, Haitian and other Afro Caribbean migrants, and migrants who are, or are perceived to be, Muslim or of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent,” Bustamante, a professor of sociology specialized in international migration and human rights at the University of Notre Dame, writes in his report to the Council.
Other concerns included numerous cases of indefinite detention, the lack of due process for some non-citizens in the United States deportation proceedings, and their difficulties in challenging the legality, conditions and length of their detention.
“In some cases immigrant detainees spend days in solitary confinement, with overhead lights kept on 24 hours a day, and often in extreme heat and cold,” the report reads. “According to official sources, the United States Government detains over 230,000 people a year more than three times the number of people it held in detention nine years ago.”
Bustamante has provided a list of detailed recommendations and conclusions, stressing the need for an institution at the federal level with a mandate solely devoted to the human rights of migrants, a national body that truly represents the voices and concerns of the migrant population, and which could address underlying causes of migration and the human rights concerns of migrants within the United States.
The UN Special Rapporteur has reiterated the need for countries – not just the US – to consider taking measures to further promote legal migratory channels to encourage regular labor mobility flows, including schemes for temporary and circular migration and the movement of skilled and semi-skilled labor under regional mechanisms for the free movement of labor.
Nations – he noted in his report – should also consider further developing and implementing training and awareness-raising programs for border authorities, officials at detention centers, police and military officers, and government officials, on the human rights afforded to irregular migrants during phases of the migration stage.
State lawmakers around the country as well as at the Capitol in Washington have been drafting hundreds of bills since this past year aimed at curbing illegal immigration. Political observers, however, believe that the cost and public opposition will keep many from becoming law.
According to a recent article by the Associated Press, lawmakers in eight states are now sponsoring legislation similar to the nation’s most comprehensive anti-immigration law, passed by Oklahoma in May last year. Notably, it restricts illegal immigrants’ access to driver’s licenses and other IDs, limits public benefits, penalizes employers who hire them and boosts ties between local police and federal immigration authorities.
“They [States] feel like they have to take it into their own hands because the federal government is doing nothing,” said to the Associated Press Sharma Hammond, staff attorney for the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that helps States write the comprehensive bills and favors a freeze on nearly all immigration.
“It’s questionable how many of the bills will become law,” she stressed. “Many quickly lose momentum after they’re introduced.”
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