Miguel Pickard - On International Migrants’ Day: a call to end policies that generate misery

Miguel Pickard is a Mexican economist and researcher. He is co-founder of CIEPAC in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas (Mexico). CIEPAC defines itself as a civil organization that accompanies the social movements in Chiapas, Mexico and Meso-America, as well as the global struggles that seek to build a more democratic world, with justice and dignity for all.

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According to official figures, every day more than 1,600 people leave Mexico, the vast majority with no legal documents to enter their main destination, the United States. So many are leaving that the United Nations has recognized that Mexico expels more people than any other in the world. More than India o China whose population is many times greater than Mexico’s 105 million. Some would say that the UN recognition is a shameful acknowledgment of the failure of economic policies implemented over the past 25 years. Time and again, these policies have proven to be a total failure, judged by one traditional yardstick, e.g., their ability to generate well being for the population. Current policies do the opposite. They generate misery for millions.

The numbers are numbing. Statistics from the Mexican government indicate that during the recently-concluded government of Vicente Fox (2000-2006), some 3.2 million Mexicans left Mexico, an average of more than one-half million per year. During 2006, the figure will surpass the average since the government has calculated that by December 31 almost 600,000 people will have left Mexico. Official discourse sings the praises of these emigrants, calling them “heros and heroines” who have migrated to “improve their opportunities”.

The sad fact is that the immense majority of these 600,000 Mexicans did not emigrate willingly, as if it were a matter of life styles, but out of the most basic of human needs, e.g., survival.

Unfortunately, economic policies implemented over the past 25 years have been a total failure in carrying out their principal task of creating conditions for improving living standards for the majority of the population. These policies, known as neoliberal, have done just the opposite. Over the past quarter century these policies have destroyed jobs, increased poverty levels, ruined livelihoods in the countryside, and increased the gap in income distribution in Mexico. As in so many countries that have implemented similar policies, a handful of very rich people are getting much wealthier, while the poverty of millions is deepening and widening.

Neoliberal policies have brought important changes in Mexico’s ability to generate wealth. In the countryside, Mexico has lost food self-sufficiency, and in the city, the country is continuing to de-industrialize. The traditional picture of Mexican migration continues to be true: a rural family, facing stiff and illegal competition from major multinational agrobusiness concerns, finds survival impossible and sends one or more members to the city to supplement income. Very few will find work in the city and most will continue their migratory trek towards the United States. Now, city people increasingly are joining with rural migrants on the journey to foreign destinations. Since 1994, the centerpiece of neoliberal policies in the region has been NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).

Since 1994, Mexican migration has increased 300%, irrefutable proof of the failure of economic policies to increase the general welfare. Their devastating effects on the Mexican population were predicted even before the start of NAFTA. In 1994, in anticipation of what was to happen, the US began to implement several “operations” designed to discourage the crossing of immigrants at the most frequented border crossing points. These operations failed to detain migration; in fact it skyrocketed. What these operations achieved was to force immigrants to seek less watched, but more dangerous routes, with deplorable results. More than four thousand women and men have died in deserts and mountains, for the “crime” of having sought the survival of their families.

Now the US hopes to stop the flow by building a wall. The foreseeable results are no different from those brought by the operations. When will we be able to look reality straight on and see the root causes of migration? When will governments recognize that the only true solution to migration lies in generating jobs at home, with salaries that will afford a dignified existence?

On this International Day of the Migrant we call on people of all nationalities to denounce the failure of NAFTA and associated neoliberal policies. Enough of 25 years of failed policies. All human beings have the right to migrate to seek a better life. But it is time to proclaim the right to NOT have to migrate, and live a dignified existence in our home countries.

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