UNFPA Report on Immigrants
Western prejudices are largely ill-founded
Afp, Paris
Evidence shows that certain prejudices about immigrants that prevail in the industrialised world are largely ill-founded, the United Nations Population Fund said in its annual report yesterday These include complaints that immigrants take locals' jobs, depress wage levels and are a burden on the social welfare system."Empirical evidence to support each of these complaints is weak or ambiguous -- at least at the aggregate level," the UNFPA said in its 2006 report on the state of the world population. It also pointed out that women migrants, who make up nearly 50 percent of the 191 million known migrants worldwide, played a vital role in financially supporting their families back home and by filling skills gaps in areas such as nursing in the countries to which they moved. The publication of the report comes amid increasing political debate about undocumented immigrants in Europe and the United States. In the US, the House of Representatives has passed a bill that beefs up security along its border with Mexico and stiffens legal penalties for illegal immigrants, without finding any way to assimilate the millions of Latin American already living clandestinely in the country. In the European Union, which is next month to discuss ways to stem the flow of clandestine migrants from Africa, immigration is particularly high on the political agenda in France, Italy and Spain. France has approved a law encouraging qualified foreign workers, while tightening entrance rules for others and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to deport 25,000 undocumented immigrants this year. The UNFPA said international migration was "a vital part of today's globalised existence" and therefore unlikely to stop. And it pleaded for a balanced approach to immigration by Western governments who might be tempted to pander to xenophobic impulses among their voters. "Growing interdependence between countries, coupled with widening inequalities, will probably lead to the further intensification of international movements," the report warned. The UNFPA acknowledged there were dark sides to immigration, including the brain drain of skilled workers from the poorest states, the huge human trafficking industry and the vulnerability of undocumented migrants to exploitation by unscrupulous employers in the West. It also accepted that immigration could create complex tensions in receiving countries. But it stressed it had "clear benefits that could be enhanced and disadvantages that could be minimised". "The US Central Intelligence Agency and ... the European Commission maintain that migration contributes to overall growth, greater productivity and higher employment -- for everyone," it pointed out.
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