00:00Police allowed to search private homes and any other relevant premises to look for undocumented migrants.
00:06Plans to deport these people, including children, to detention centres in third countries to which they have no connection.
00:13Calling on public services, health centres or schools perhaps to signal the presence of people without the right papers.
00:19Proposed legislation at the EU level has seen dozens of right groups sound the alarm.
00:23Warning that a U.S. ICE immigration enforcement style could be about to be set up across Europe.
00:30Well, to get more insight, we're joined by the director of one of the groups sounding the alarm,
00:34the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.
00:38Michelle Lavoie, thanks so much for your time and joining us on France 24.
00:42Can I start simply by asking you about your reaction to this proposed EU law?
00:47What for you is the most worrisome element of it?
00:51Yes, thank you very much for the invitation.
00:53I think what we're worrying about is that we see that there might be a possibility for the first time
00:59to deport someone,
01:01including children, as you've said, against their will to a country that they have no personal connection in,
01:07countries that they've never set foot through, where they only may have ever briefly transited.
01:15To do such a policy, this would require a massive use of immigration detention and surveillance.
01:21As we've seen in cases in other parts of the world, such as Italy, Albania, or Australia's offshore immigration detention
01:30schemes,
01:30where this has taken place previously.
01:33And we feel that this will entail human rights risks, regardless of any safeguards that might be put in place,
01:42including the risk that they could be deported to countries where they could face violence and death.
01:48But we're also very much concerned about the increase of immigration detention,
01:54the length of immigration detention, including for children.
01:57We do have global international standards, my child rights bodies, that children should never be detained for immigration purposes.
02:07It's always against their best interests and always a child rights violation.
02:12And yet the current legislation and the new proposals still allow it.
02:16And so this would increase detention also of children.
02:20And of course, what we're especially concerned about are these detection measures.
02:25So in order, there's a new proposal that the Council of States made on its own position on this regulation
02:34in December,
02:35where it proposes so-called investigative measures, which would enable home raids.
02:41So without a police warrant, without a judicial warrant, it would also require most likely social services providers
02:49to report undocumented migrants to the immigration authorities in order to speed up their return.
02:56So we're very concerned that these broad detection measures could also lead to mass surveillance,
03:02an increase of the already existing racial profiling that we see throughout Europe,
03:07and obligations for professionals, healthcare professionals or social workers, to go against their professional ethics.
03:17Tell us a bit more about how it compares to the reality for undocumented migrants already here today.
03:24As you were saying, there's already detention, even child detention going about.
03:28Migrants, undocumented migrants, already hide from the authorities.
03:32So what is the situation for them today?
03:34It seems somewhat of a vicious circle often as well.
03:36You can't get a job without the papers, but you need a job to get the papers.
03:41Indeed.
03:42So living as an undocumented migrant today in Europe and other parts of the world
03:47means that you most likely have to work because otherwise you cannot survive, in a sense.
03:54So we cannot dissociate work without talking about undocumented migrants
03:59because it's a reality for the overwhelming majority.
04:02But unfortunately, the ways of having decent work are limited.
04:07So we know that there's a reality in many different sectors of the economy
04:12that rely on workers who have precarious or regular migration status,
04:17but yet there's not the right permits, or the permits aren't long enough,
04:21or the permits aren't stable enough.
04:23So that is kind of one part of the situation.
04:26And the other part is, how do governments currently actually address this situation?
04:32So this proposal is calling for more detention, for more deportation.
04:37But governments also are regularizing undocumented migrants.
04:41We only have to look at Spain, which a couple of weeks ago announced a major regularization
04:46that could benefit up to more than 500,000 people.
04:51Spain is not an anomaly.
04:53It's not an exception.
04:55We've actually been looking together with researchers and other institutes
05:00at regularization policies and procedures,
05:03and we've found that the majority of European governments do have something in their laws
05:10or they have done programs in the past decades to regularize people.
05:14So we are very concerned about the policy choices that are prioritized,
05:19because all of them are policy choices,
05:22and governments also have other policy choices on regularization.
05:26Available to them.
05:27So who exactly is pushing for these changes at this EU level of, you know,
05:33an increasing crackdown on migration?
05:37Well, we've seen in recent years as governments kind of build coalitions
05:42and different parties come into governments that usually when you have more pressure
05:47from the right or the far right, you might see more extreme measures.
05:52So, for example, in some coalition governments that we've seen,
05:56like Sweden, for example, there's also a very similar proposal
06:01that almost now will become law in the coming months to have detection measures.
06:07So to require undocumented migrants to be reported by service professionals
06:12to the immigration authorities.
06:13The reason why this proposal went through was because of the coalition government
06:18and because of the focus on return.
06:19So we see that usually when there's trying to cater, in a sense,
06:24to more of a rightist agenda, that we see certain proposals being in place.
06:30However, I should also note that we see elements of this in the past decades.
06:36So we have seen police raids in certain countries in recent decades as well.
06:43There is surveillance, racial profiling, not only for people who are from outside the EU,
06:50but even of EU citizens is a reality in Europe.
06:55And so when a lot of this is already the reality and there are new legislative proposals
07:01focusing on undocumented migrants, it exacerbates and it makes it much more difficult
07:06for people to go about their daily lives and which are already part of the community.
07:11Okay, so you say it's a policy choice and it's coming perhaps more from the far right
07:16than other things.
07:17It seems like it's growing across Europe.
07:20Migrants are often pointed to as the problem when it comes to a lot of issues
07:24such as housing or jobs or any of that.
07:26But looking at the cold, hard facts, can you give me just a global idea
07:30of the impact migration has on countries and their economies?
07:35Yes, it's overwhelmingly positive.
07:38We see this also in Spain.
07:42Individuals in Spain who have a regular migration status are already contributing overwhelmingly
07:48to the economy.
07:49Having regular status only solidifies that and enables more proper taxes through the regular
07:57system.
07:58So we have individuals who contribute to societies.
08:02Our societies are undoubtedly richer through diversity.
08:06We have seen this in time and time again throughout the world and we see that people in a sense
08:14live in
08:16a more harmonious way when there are regular possibilities for people to live regularly when they are not faced
08:23into exclusion and isolation.
08:25And so we see that policy choices can be made.
08:29And there's many, many examples, not only at the national governmental level, but also at the city governmental level.
08:36This has also been very encouraging to see our cities that step up and have such policies.
08:41And just finally, before we let you go, I'm wondering, is there a limit to migration that could be or
08:47should be put in place?
08:48And what measures do you think would actually work?
08:52Well, we see what does work are a number of these measures that try to address why do people become
08:59undocumented?
09:00That actually should be the first question.
09:03Not how can we better deport them, but what is causing irregular migration?
09:07Why do people, in the overwhelming majority of people who are undocumented, most likely entered the EU regularly?
09:15So they did not enter irregularly.
09:18They came in as a student, as a worker, as a spouse, etc.
09:24And so trying to understand then why did they become undocumented and what can be done to resolve the irregularity
09:31should really be the question when we look at irregular migration.
09:35Deportation is a very severe policy.
09:38It's very detrimental to human rights.
09:41And the EU itself, even when looking at migration management, had considered voluntary return.
09:48So allowing people to try to return to their countries if they wished on their own accord.
09:54But even this is deprioritized in the current context.
09:57So we're really looking at the experience from governments, from a wide range of stakeholders over many decades,
10:05both in the EU and outside the EU, to see where are these promising practices and how can we replicate
10:10them.
Comments