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International Migration News - Volume #8 | |
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Global Trends
Migrants/ Refugees. December 18 was declared International Migrant's Day by the UN in recognition of the 150 million persons living outside their country of birth or citizenship. More than 124 of the UN's 189-member nations signed the Convention against Transnational Crime in Palermo in December 2000; 80 signed the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, and 79 signed the Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said: "The trafficking of persons, especially women and children, for forced and exploitative labor, including for sexual exploitation, is one of the most egregious violations of human rights which the UN now confronts." There are 13 million refugees around the world, and about 150,000 or about one percent are re-settled each year in new countries, including 80,000 in the US. UNHCR in 2000 operated in 120 countries, with 5,000 employees and a $1 billion budget to care for 22 million people around the world, including internally displaced persons. Trade/Debt. World trade of $9 trillion a year is growing faster than world GDP, about $30 trillion. Trade in services is growing faster than trade in goods and the US, which ran a $450 billion trade deficit in goods in 2000, is expected to run a trade surplus of at least $80 billion in services trade. Worldwide, the US accounts for almost 20 percent of the global $1.3 trillion in trade in services. The United States, Japan and European and other industrial powers in December 2000 agreed to forgive loans to 22 of the world's poorest countries this year, fulfilling a promise to accelerate debt relief and to give a token of the West's unprecedented prosperity to the poor. About $125 billion in debt is to be forgiven, but only after countries show that the money not used to service the debt is used for programs that help the poor. So far, only one of the 22 nations that have been granted debt relief, Uganda, has received all the benefits promised- the others are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia in Africa and Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras and Nicaragua in Latin America. If global warming causes ocean levels to rise to a projected three feet by 2080, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change thinks that one billion people could be displaced. Areas with the most "environmental refugees" include the west coast of Africa, China, and south Asia. Dual Nationals. The 20th century marked the rise of nation states and loyalty to a nation state; the 21st century may mark the rise of dual nationality, being a national of two or more of the over 200 sovereign nation states in the world. As more major emigration countries such as Turkey and Mexico change their laws to explicitly permit dual nationality, the number of dual nationals will rise. There are two major ways through which nation-states define nationality: jus sanguinis (the children of nationals are nationals) or jus soli (nationals are persons born on the territory). Since countries differed in which principle they adopted, for example, Germany adopted jus sanguinis and the US jus soli, there were conflicts, as when European states drafted for military service naturalized Americans when they visited their homelands. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were many bilateral treaties dealing with conflicts that could arise from dual nationality, and these conflicts gave rise to the 1930 Hague Convention on Certain Questions relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, which says "every person should have a nationality and should have one nationality only." The United Nations' International Law Commission in 1954 repeated this sentiment: "All persons are entitled to possess one nationality, but one nationality only." The policy of one person, one nationality changed in past several decades. The growing toleration of dual nationality at the end of the 20th century has been attributed to several factors, including economic integration, the decline of conscription, and ending the practice of having a married woman and her children acquire the nationality of their father. Emigration nations wanting their nationals abroad to remit funds have also changed their attitudes, shifting from seeing migrants as "traitors" to seeing them as economic saviors. Some people become dual nationals because of an accident of birth, but many others want to be dual nationals, electing to keep their old nationality when they naturalize or seek to reacquire their old nationality if they were required to renounce it when they naturalize. There are loyalty, convenience and economic reasons for being a dual national: individuals may feel that they "belong to" two or more nation states, an American may want to be, for example, a national of an EU country if to avoid long lines, and a Mexican may want to retain Mexican nationality to own land near Mexico's coastlines. What can immigration countries do to reduce the growth of dual nationals? Germany has a seemingly tough policy, requiring foreigners who naturalize to show that they have renounced their previous nationality. However, there are loopholes, including for example, persons from states that do not release their citizens from nationality, such as Iran, or for those that require the completion of military service before being released from citizenship, such as Turkey. The challenges posed by the growth of dual nationals include the issues that arise with multiple military obligations, both the obligation to serve in the military services of two countries and the possibility that an emigrant who naturalized abroad might return to join the armed forces of his other nationality in time of war, as some Serbian-Canadians did. It appears that the growth of the number of persons with dual nationality will require more cooperation to manage the issues that accompany dual nationality, including military service, taxation, and voting. The policy issue is whether dual nationality should be tolerated and encouraged, with the aim of working out the problems that arise, or whether dual nationality should be discouraged. Some commentators stress the benefits to the individual and sometimes the two nation states of dual nationality, and stress that problems that arise with dual nationality can be overcome. Others argue that the problems and conflicts of dual nationality can best be minimized by reducing the incentives for individuals to seek dual nationality, for example, differential rights to land ownership or inheritance or different tax law | |
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