The migration agreement as the last nail in the coffin for the left parties
By Norbert Haring, 24.10.2018, http://norberthaering.de/de/27-german/news/1049-migrationsabkommen-sargnagel
In December, the Federal Government and most of the other UN member states want to sign a Global agreement to promote labor migration in Morocco. It is the fruit of long intensive lobbying by the big international corporations. On November 8th the Bundestag debates it - at the request of the AfD. The left and the former left-wing parties are closing their eyes and leave the AFD as the defender of the interests of the workers and small employees who are competing with migrant workers. The abandoned will remember that.
The venue for the ceremony, Morocco, is currently the main gateway through which African migrants (via Spain) reach the EU. The last revision of the agreement until the final draft were taken care of by the Federal Government together with Morocco as joint chairs of the UN's "Global Forum for Migration and Development". The agreement aims to facilitate and improve the conditions for cross-border labor migration. The coalition government of the Union and the SPD has promoted the pact according to its own account in the report on its UN activities "politically, substantively, personally and financially" and "actively designed by text proposals." Although the agreement was conceived as "politically obligatory", but "not legally binding". An agreement of the Bundestag is therefore not necessary.
The USA and Hungary are not participating because they do not want to promote migration. Some other countries have also made reservations in recent weeks.
Good for everyone
According to the final draft, voluntary migration is good for everyone: for the migrants themselves, for the destination countries - where they increase labor supply for businesses and counteract population aging - and for the countries of origin, where they relieve the labor market and, through money transfers to the home country, alleviate poverty.
"Migration contributes to development and to achieving the objectives of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, if managed properly."
As stated in the text of the agreement. (Reading support: if-phrases are a popular way to inconspicuously convey a wishful-thinking like a fact.)
There is "powerful evidence that migrants bring great benefits to both host countries and countries of origin," the UN Secretary-General states in his report. "Making Migration Work for All"(page 5). The pact expresses the same clearly more swollen in its swelling language:
"We commit ourselves to empower migrants and Diasporas to make a catalytic contribution to development, and to reap the benefits of migration as a source of sustainable development, affirming that migration is a multidimensional reality of great importance for the sustainable development of the place of origin-, transit- and destination countries. "
Therefore, the signatories commit to "adapting ways for regular migration to promote labor mobility".
This positive view of migration can also be found today in important international organizations such as the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM). "Migration is increasingly recognized as an important factor in achieving all three pillars of sustainable development," it says on its website. And the club of the industrialized countries OECD sees "important benefits for migrants as well as for countries of origin and destination countries."
Criticism from the south
The Mexican development economist Raul Delgado Wise, one of the leading experts from the South, criticized this as a very one-sided view when asked. He is UNESCO Coordinator for Migration and Development and President of the International Network for Migration and Development. He notes:
"If you look at the data, migration is subsidizing the north by the south."
For example, remittances from US-Mexicans to their homelands accounted for only one-third of what the US alone would have had to spend on education to bring up workers with the educational level of the Mexican immigrants. Since half of them have no legal status, they still work at very low wages and could hardly claim social benefits.
A recent study by the US bank Citi together with Oxford professor Ian Goldin confirms this verdict, from the view of the industrialized countries.
“Migrants come with education and training that the country of origin paid for. They take fewer social benefits and get less state money than citizens of the country and they are usually of working age. "
Immigrants have therefore already made a major contribution to wealth creation in the industrialized countries.
At the same time it is acknowledged that the “brain drain” problem for the countries of origin needs to be managed:
"Highly skilled brain drain has significant financial and social costs for many countries and is seen as the greatest mobility risk for developing countries."
Between one-fifth and half of the high-skilled in Africa and Central America emigrated, with a share of university graduates, which is in Sub-Saharan Africa anyway only four percent. Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) recently joined in the Handelsblatt interview this criticism:
“It's not like Africa has no potential. But that is not made greater by the fact that the hardest prefer to flee to Europe. "
Delgado Wise criticizes: "Home transfers are the new development mantra." The “unrealistic win-win-win scenario” of the UN organizations unilaterally favors the interests of the recipient countries and the employers there ”. The World Bank in particular has done a lot to enforce the new mantra, he diagnoses.
Sweet poison migration
He gets help from the sister organization of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Four economists of the fund have presented an empirical study with the title "Are Remittances Good for Labor Markets", showing that the large dependence of many poor countries on home remittances represents a significant problem for them. "They reduce labor market participation and increase the proportion of informal employment relationships," it states.
The additional demand would benefit lower-productivity, low-wage industries at the expense of the more productive ones. While inequality diminishes slightly with high home transfers, at the same time average wages and productivity growth are declining. They could hardly see home transfers as a tool to achieve development goals. Instead, home transfers can rather be seen as sweet poison.
The problem of brain drain is mentioned in the migration agreement only briefly in a subordinate clause, as something that should be avoided - not completely conclusive - through additional training efforts. It is true that the agreement calls for ensuring, in the interests of those affected, that migration is voluntary and not forced by desperation and lack of prospects. Delgado Wise countered that: "Migration from the south to the north is essentially a migration forced by the prosperity gap." Calling migration voluntary would be whitewashing.
The federal government also wants, according to one Preparation of the scientific service of the Bundestag (Paragraph 2.3. No. 2) to combat irregular migration through better education in the countries of origin so that migrant workers have better job opportunities. If that is not cynical. The countries of origin should kindly educate the people who they release to Germany beforehand.
Before being consulted extensively by the World Economic Forum, the UN agencies had a more differentiated view. As stated in the strategy paper "Mainstreaming Migration into Developing Planning" of the migration-related UN units of 2010, there was concern that emigration and home remittances could drive inflation without increasing productivity and that they could harm the education system and key industries through brain drain.
Even in the destination countries, not all groups necessarily benefit from immigration. In a presentation documented on the Internet, the Vice President of the Directorate General for Economics at the Bundesbank said in January: “In recent years, net immigration from EU countries has been a factor that has severely dampened wage increases.” What is good for employers is evidently not necessarily good for employees.
summary
Promotion of labor migration in the style of the large corporations organized in the World Economic Forum, as reflected in the UN migration agreement, harms both workers in the destination countries and the migrants' countries of origin. The beneficiaries are the companies and capital owners in the industrialized countries. Left parties who support something like this are doomed and deserve it.
PS Here is a link to the recently available German translation of the pact , It was somehow forgotten to make it early.
[24.10.2018]
Change note: (15.11.): Under the subheading Good for All, I accidentally attributed the claim that there was "powerful evidence ..." to the pact. In fact, the quote comes from the report of the UN Secretary-General, as I had correctly stated in the original blogpost "Why Germany is really committed to the UN migration pact". I also added the passage from the pact with a similar statement. The first quote under "Good for All" reads in the now available German translation: "Migration, especially when well managed, contributes to positive development outcomes and to the achievement of the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development."
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