EDITORIAL

The Ease of Global Human Mobility

by JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

If one is a migrant worker, or a foreign tourist wishing to go to Malaysia, he will feel the comfort of passing through Malaysia’s gateway: the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). With many rows of immigration officials in tow, travelers can freely choose where to go.

No immigration cards are needed, unlike in other countries. “It is because all travelers’ details are computerized already,” a male immigration officer said.

KLIA appears classy than some of the Philippines’ shopping malls. Marbled floors and food stalls just provide brightness to people inside the spacious international airport.

Of course, there are rules: Some 45 degree-angled escalators are allowed to accommodate baggage pushcarts, even if some airlines allow 20 kg. baggage limit.

When foreigners get into the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, they are given some simple rules. Southeast Asians are welcome, says a Philippine embassy official, but the Malaysian government advises them “to leave the country on or before the expiry date of one’s visa”.

, must abide: kissing the hands or cheeks of others, except spouses, should be avoided. The right hand should always be used when eating, when giving and receiving objects.

What about the left hand? “In Malaysian tradition, the left hand is considered unclean,” says a handbook for Filipino workers.

Rules govern whatever is being traveled—things, money, trade, and now people. Whatever one’s motives are as a traveler, as bearer or exporter of goods to countries, rules are the name of the game. There are also different rules for different milieus: educational qualifications for foreign workers in Canada and Switzerland differ, so do regulations governing irregular or undocumented migrants in Italy, Australia, and the United States.

But for some 200 million people whom the world calls as “migrants,” while they try to follow or skirt different rules governing their being in lands other than their own, they show that today’s global human mobility is not only rapid, but can be raucous for governments and redeeming for individuals.

What rapidly moves are not just people, but cash and in-kind remittances, ideas, cultures and norms, national and transnational identities, peoples’ rights, and poor peoples’ dreams of better lives. It ain’t easy for many governments to talk about international migration, more so its relationship with development.

Some rich countries like Japan, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Canada feel the pinch: to sustain their economies, they gulped in saying that they need foreign labor.

Many people’s current interest with this six percent segment of the global population called migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers was not seen before: even the United Nations General Assembly had thumbed down previous proposals for a world conference on migration and development.
But the bubble is about to burst: over-US$300 billion of remittances to developing and least-developed countries are a stark fact that development groups cannot just shy away at the concerns of these undocumented and documented people. Developing countries like the Philippines have even made their dues to developed countries: their nurses have saved developed countries’ health systems.

If the International Labour Office thinks there remains an immense demand worldwide for low-skilled labor, imagine if developed country nationals who are bank executives, diplomats, and government officials will be the ones to clean their own laundry and dishes after toiling from their daily work.

Even American business people are raking in money from a migrant: Yao Ming, and Chinese nationals in the US are making US businesses’ cash registers active.

International migration has its own blessings and curses, depending from the vantage point of origin and of receiving societies. Regardless of how one looks at international migration and development, governments have no choice but to review their immigration rules, their relationships with other countries, and the interdependency of the economies of the so-called First World and Third World.

“There has never been a time than now it’s easier for workers to move around despite of, in spite of, and even against greater state control over migration,” wrote MOVE, a magazine of OFW.

These call for reflection because of migrants —ordinary apple pickers, construction workers, nannies and caregivers, scientists, and many more who send money home; who provide income and some measures of economic stability to their host countries. They are now “development actors.”

Last October, the Philippines hosted the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development in Manila. The GFMD is not under the United Nations System; it is a conclave that brought together governments, migrants, and private/civil society actors from over-150 states to talk about practical solutions on international migration and development to provide equal benefits to everyone. The Ayala Foundation handled the civil society days, while the Department of Foreign Affairs convened the inter-governmental forum.

No less than UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon oversaw the Second GFMD. This annual event began in Brussels , Belgium in 2007 was inspired by the prodding of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the world to look at the conditions of migrants. The Philippines showcased its ways of managing the outflow of people for work and permanent settlement abroad, and of handling problems associated with international migration.
International migration is the world’s newest “great equalizer” for people and for countries affected by this demographic phenomenon. People find in their overseas migration that opportunities will stand to benefit even foreigners and host country nationals.

In the words of Kofi Annan, the welfare of migrants should not be set aside. Migrants may be among the reasons why global human mobility is easy for some and uneasy for others. But their simple hard work and dreams for their families back home, and in their adopted countries, are now providing today’s world with a future built on multiculturalism, respect, and global equity. /MP