Statement on Migrant Rights

In observance of the United Nations’ International Migrants Day, we stand together to call upon the U.S. government and the United Nations itself, to uphold the human rights of all immigrants and refugees. We express our concern for the plight of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants and refugees who are seeking “human security”: peace, safety, community, employment, shelter, civil liberties, access to culture, education and health care, while being criminalized, discriminated against, and subjected to new forms of racial, ethnic, national origin and religious profiling being practiced as part of everyday immigration law enforcement and services.
 
December 18 honors the day in 1990, when the UN General Assembly passed the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. It is a day in which we recognize the enormous contribution that migrants make to all countries of our world.  
 
Migration continues to be a growing, global phenomenon. Over 185 million people worldwide, or one out of every thirty-five persons, are migrants -- living, working, raising families and building communities in places outside their country of origin.  However, migration policies and practices often fail to protect the human rights of migrants, and in many cases, contribute to greater and systematic abuse.
 
We call for a national immigration policy in the U.S. built upon the principles of human security with dignity, justice, and equality, and that uphold the civil and human rights of all people, regardless of their race, color, class, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, immigration or citizenship status.
 
We call on all countries, including the United States, to ratify the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which establishes a comprehensive framework to uphold the rights of migrants. We congratulate the 35 nations that have ratified this Convention, and urge them to fully comply with the aims and mandate of this important agreement.
 
We applaud the unprecedented outpouring of immigrant communities around the U.S. this year, which called for the recognition of immigrant rights and an end to attacks on immigrant communities.  In steadfast denouncement of House Bill HR4437 and other accompanying bills in Congress, millions of immigrant families and supporters took to the streets from Chicago to Houston, from Los Angeles to Boston, and from Seattle to Miami throughout the year, demonstrating widespread resolve towards the call for real comprehensive immigration reform.

In the United States, the U.S.-Mexico border region, in particular, continues to experience intensified militarization with impunity, and has become a de-constitutionalized zone where communities and immigrants are racially profiled and subjected to unfair detentions and deportations.  We condemn the Bush Administration’s and the U.S. Congress’ approval of 700 more miles of additional walls, electronic surveillance and the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to police the border.  These border control policies and immigration law enforcement initiatives, being implemented with impunity, have only served to force migrants into more remote, desolate and dangerous border zones to cross, resulting every year in hundreds of deaths and countless others who have disappeared in the desert, creating a permanent and sorrowful loss to their families and communities.

We reject restrictive immigration proposals in Congress that would criminalize immigrants through intensified border enforcement, and extend inhumane enforcement mechanisms to the interior.  We further reject the current “compromise” proposals that contain guest-worker provisions that would expand and sustain an underclass of migrant workers, inevitably exposing migrant workers to employer abuse.  Furthermore, we denounce such provisions that ensure corporations a pool of cheap, disposable labor for use and discard according to economic demands.

We welcome the increased attention of the United Nations towards migration on the occasion of its High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development this past September, and congratulate Member States and the Secretary General on recognizing the importance of protecting the rights of all migrants.  However, we deplore the significant lack of inclusion of migrant community voices in the dialogue itself, and we continue to express grave concern that the proposed Forum on Migration and Development might only include the participation of civil society when Member States deemed it “desirable and appropriate”.  As the United Nations itself acknowledges, just and effective policies can only be achieved with full democratic participation, which with regard to migration policies, must certainly include migrant communities.

We believe that the U.S. must fulfill its commitment to uphold the human rights of all members of our country and the globe.  As part of the international human rights community, we decry the death, forced displacement and creation of new migrant and refugee populations as a result of U.S. foreign policy and military belligerence in the Middle East and the rest of the world.
 
On this International Migrants Day 2006, and as we move towards a new year, let us renew our commitment to human security for all -- a commitment to the right to live free of fear, racism, and xenophobia,  -- and a commitment to safety and the defense of human rights for all communities.

Peace and Freedom Party of Fresno County
December 8, 2006