Crisis may stop migration flow–UN

MIGRATION, considered to be the easiest way to a better life for Filipinos, is seriously under fire because of the lingering global financial meltdown, the United Nations (UN) trade arm said Thursday.

Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), noted the economic downturn has hit construction, manufacturing and other sectors that employ migrants.

“With 60 million people expected to be out of work by year’s end, the total number of people pushed out of their jobs by the recession would climb to 240 million. As such, the crisis will be impacting quite significantly on the flow of migrants,” Supachai said in a statement at the start of Unctad’s one-day gathering in Geneva.

He said women migrants would feel the impact the most as jobs in health care, education and domestic services shrink.

Sha Zukang, head of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said the number of migrants could reach 214 million by 2010, but the recession has reversed the trend of the rising proportion of women in the migrant workforce.

However, Supachai said, “Global pacts can also ensure that knowledge and technology benefit the sending countries, as well as avoiding the negative effects of the so-called brain drain on such nations.”

The Philippines is currently negotiating a labor pact with Lebanon and Jordan, which will primarily provide security and decent working conditions for household service workers.

William Swing, director general of the International Organization for Migration, lamented that while there are lots of pacts dealing with free flows of money, investment and goods, legal migration channels remain inadequate. “That situation opens doors of opportunity for those who traffic human beings,” he said at the meeting.

“Meanwhile remittances are falling, jobs are being lost, and we fear that levels of official development assistance and foreign direct investment may decline. Remittances may drop by nine percent in the current year,” Swing added. — Llanesca T. Panti, Manila Times