Problems of Migration
Migration refers to the shifting of people from one place to another with the intentions of settling temporarily or permanently in the new location. It can be within a respective country which is known as internal migration or to another country. Migration occurs individually or in large groups and has both pros and cons.
The countries from which the migrants originate are referred to as origin countries and the countries which the migrants enter are known as host countries. Some of the main reasons for migration are in search of job opportunities, improved standard of living and other reasons amongst many favourable things that indicate towards better lives for the migrants and their families
Some positive impacts on the host countries include filling of job vacancies, increase in competition at work place and sustaining the economic growth of that country. The negative impact on the host countries include temporary depression of wages, exploitation of migrants, unemployment if there is excess migration, ease of movement can aid human trafficking and organised crime.
The countries of origin are also affected and some positive effects are developing countries benefit from remittances sent home by migrants, reduction in population concentration, reduction of unemployment and improved standard of living. The negative impacts include economic disadvantage due to loss of manpower, loss of skilled workers and personal problems for children left behind.
Therefore, it is clear that immigration can be beneficial for migrants(if their rights are protected). It can also be economically beneficial for both origin and host countries but currently, due to the present economic and trading structures, only the rich, developed countries are prospering.
And it is necessary to understand that migration is inevitable due to the existence of economic pre-conditions and if there is an attempt to prevent immigration or migration, it just goes underground
Europe’s history has been shaped by migration. For centuries, merchants, craftsmen and intellectuals crossed the continent to practice their trades or start new lives. Millions emigrated from Europe, first to the colonies and later to the Americas and the Antipodes. Europe also has a long history of forced migration: from the expulsion of the Jews from Spain to the population shifts in southeast Europe caused by the many wars between the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.
Large-scale immigration into western Europe is more recent. From 1960 to 1973, the number of foreign workers in western Europe doubled from 3 to 6% of the workforce. It was highest in places like the UK and France, with relatively open access for citizens of their former colonies; in Germany, too, the number of foreigners (nearly half Turks) rose 4m in the 25 years after 1960, although they seldom became citizens. But primary immigration into Europe – driven by labour needs – all but ended with the oil crisis of 1973. The foreign-born population has continued to grow, not least because most countries still issue tens of thousands of residence permits each year for the purposes of family reunification (nearly 80% of the 58,700 people accepted for permanent settlement in the UK in 1997 were wives and children). EU countries also issue thousands of work permits each year. In Britain in 1997, nearly half of the 54,000 permits went to Americans and Japanese mainly in highly skilled jobs; elsewhere in Europe the permits often go to seasonal farm workers. But the proportion of foreign-born residents in the EU remains low, ranging from 9% in Austria, Belgium and Germany, to under 2% in Spain.
Since the late 1980s, the number of people applying for asylum has increased sharply. In 1984 there were only 104,000 applications in western Europe. This figure grew to 692,000 in 1992 and then declined during much of the 1990s. Numbers grew again to 350,000 in 1998 and about 400,000 in 1999, although this year they have begun to fall away. Thus asylum has become one of the principal means of immigration into the EU.
Why this sudden surge? The end of the Cold War lifted the lid on a number of small wars and ethnic conflicts around the world. In this type of warfare, the combatants – regular troops complimented by paramilitaries – often target civilian populations. Many people applying for asylum are ostensibly fleeing such “ethnic cleansing”, most notably in Bosnia in the early 1990s and Kosovo in the late 1990s. Also, with the end of communist rule many eastern Europeans believe that their aspirations for a better life can only be served in the west. With freer movement and cheaper travel, it is not surprising that many have tried to emigrate westward. The problem is that tens of thousands have tried to use the asylum process to do so, leading to a backlash, in some countries, against all types of migrants.
The top six countries from which British asylum-seekers came last year were China, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Poland and Afghanistan. But most of the world’s refugees do not get to Europe. They remain in the region close to their countries, often in camps. Iran was housing some 1.9m refugees in 1998, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are some 2m Afghan and Iraqi refugees in Pakistan.
But in some EU states, asylum has become a totemic issue. It overlaps with other emotional matters such as ethnicity and identity, revealing an illiberal streak in liberal democracies. But we should keep things in perspective. It may have been easier for migrants to enter the UK 100 years ago, but once there they were far more likely to face violence and had nothing like the legal and social protection of today’s welfare states. None the less, resentment of “the other” can be exploited by demagogues, especially when there is no obvious gap in the job market for refugees to fill. Overall, refugees are only a small burden on taxpayers – but this may not be how it seems in areas of high refugee density (in Britain this means a few London boroughs or towns like Dover), where migrants share services such as schools, hospitals and housing with the poorest locals.
Large-scale immigration into western Europe is more recent. From 1960 to 1973, the number of foreign workers in western Europe doubled from 3 to 6% of the workforce. It was highest in places like the UK and France, with relatively open access for citizens of their former colonies; in Germany, too, the number of foreigners (nearly half Turks) rose 4m in the 25 years after 1960, although they seldom became citizens. But primary immigration into Europe – driven by labour needs – all but ended with the oil crisis of 1973. The foreign-born population has continued to grow, not least because most countries still issue tens of thousands of residence permits each year for the purposes of family reunification (nearly 80% of the 58,700 people accepted for permanent settlement in the UK in 1997 were wives and children). EU countries also issue thousands of work permits each year. In Britain in 1997, nearly half of the 54,000 permits went to Americans and Japanese mainly in highly skilled jobs; elsewhere in Europe the permits often go to seasonal farm workers. But the proportion of foreign-born residents in the EU remains low, ranging from 9% in Austria, Belgium and Germany, to under 2% in Spain.
Since the late 1980s, the number of people applying for asylum has increased sharply. In 1984 there were only 104,000 applications in western Europe. This figure grew to 692,000 in 1992 and then declined during much of the 1990s. Numbers grew again to 350,000 in 1998 and about 400,000 in 1999, although this year they have begun to fall away. Thus asylum has become one of the principal means of immigration into the EU.
Why this sudden surge? The end of the Cold War lifted the lid on a number of small wars and ethnic conflicts around the world. In this type of warfare, the combatants – regular troops complimented by paramilitaries – often target civilian populations. Many people applying for asylum are ostensibly fleeing such “ethnic cleansing”, most notably in Bosnia in the early 1990s and Kosovo in the late 1990s. Also, with the end of communist rule many eastern Europeans believe that their aspirations for a better life can only be served in the west. With freer movement and cheaper travel, it is not surprising that many have tried to emigrate westward. The problem is that tens of thousands have tried to use the asylum process to do so, leading to a backlash, in some countries, against all types of migrants.
The top six countries from which British asylum-seekers came last year were China, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Poland and Afghanistan. But most of the world’s refugees do not get to Europe. They remain in the region close to their countries, often in camps. Iran was housing some 1.9m refugees in 1998, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are some 2m Afghan and Iraqi refugees in Pakistan.
But in some EU states, asylum has become a totemic issue. It overlaps with other emotional matters such as ethnicity and identity, revealing an illiberal streak in liberal democracies. But we should keep things in perspective. It may have been easier for migrants to enter the UK 100 years ago, but once there they were far more likely to face violence and had nothing like the legal and social protection of today’s welfare states. None the less, resentment of “the other” can be exploited by demagogues, especially when there is no obvious gap in the job market for refugees to fill. Overall, refugees are only a small burden on taxpayers – but this may not be how it seems in areas of high refugee density (in Britain this means a few London boroughs or towns like Dover), where migrants share services such as schools, hospitals and housing with the poorest locals.
An Immigrants Story
Ruth Asmah was working on the till at Tesco when the letter came from her bosses. It said: “Please bring your passport to work on the next shift for an immigration check”.
Ruth immediately went home and started packing her two-year-old daughter’s few belongings into plastic bags.
“I don’t have a passport,” she says. “I knew I would be deported. I had to leave my job, and with no job I couldn’t pay my rent, so we would lose our home.
“We went to a charity but they couldn’t help us. We couldn’t go to social services in case the authorities caught up with us. We would have been homeless without the kindness of a friend.”
Ruth and her young daughter Dyanna (not their real names) are illegal immigrants. Since Ruth was trafficked from Ghana at the age of 14 by her aunt, who abandoned her to work as a domestic slave, she has lived beneath the radar of British life without any official documentation.
As political rhetoric around immigration reaches fever pitch with still a year to go before a general election, Ruth, 25, has to constantly look over her shoulder.
“This is how you live when you are undocumented,” she tells me. “You are constantly moving. I don’t take anything – no benefits, not even free school meals for Dyanna.”
Just two of an estimated 660,000 undocumented people living in the UK, Ruth and Dyanna’s life without papers is one of fear, poverty and broken dreams.
There is no access to the welfare state. Ruth has a national insurance number lent to her by a friend and now works in a fast- food chain. A tall, shy young woman, her uniform name badge says “Sheila” and she has to remember to answer to it.
Otherwise, Ruth and Dyanna live law-abiding lives in a Lancashire suburb, going to church, living quietly. Ruth tries to give Dyanna a normal childhood but they regularly move house to evade the authorities, vulnerable to the whims and abuses of landlords who ask no questions.
“Moving is a part of me now,” she says.
With no access to benefits that could top up their income, even child benefit, sometimes Ruth and Dyanna are malnourished. Ruth recently had to turn down a new and better-paid job because again she would need to provide her passport.
Soon they may not even be able to see a doctor if they are sick. The Government wants patients to have to prove their immigration status. It’s already hard for them to be registered with a GP because they don’t have proof of address.
“I understand why people want to send me home,” Ruth says quietly, sitting in a faded roadside cafe in Manchester. “They say Britain is full up. If I was a British person I would be worried too.”
Ruth didn’t choose to come to the UK. She was trafficked here by her aunt, who brought her in on a visitor’s visa when she was 14. She believed she was coming on holiday, but instead the aunt left her with a family who used her as a domestic slave.
Passed from family to family in and around London, she didn’t know her papers were not in order and naively trusted the aunt to come back for her.
“In Ghana, I lived by the seaside with my grandmother,” she says. “We used to sell peppers and kerosene door to door, simple things. We had food to eat. I lived in a compound. But my grandmother died when I was 14 and my auntie took me to London saying that we were going for a holiday.”
In England, Ruth yearned to go to school like the children she looked after but she just had to cook, clean and be an unpaid nanny.
“It was very hard work,” she says. She had nowhere of her own. She slept on the floor in the children’s room and ate their leftovers. “I would like to ask my aunt why she did it.” Her eyes fill with tears. “So many things I have to block out of my mind.”
Still, Ruth dreamed of becoming British. When she was 20 she ran away to live with a friend in Manchester. At the local church she fell in love with an undocumented Ghanaian man called Thomas. They moved in together and had a child. But then Thomas was arrested and deported.
When Ruth traced him in Ghana, she found out he was married. “After that I stopped getting in touch with my family,” she says. “I was too ashamed.” Dyanna is now five years old and has started school.
“She has very good school reports,” Ruth says. Her face grows animated. “Dyanna is good at music. They say she is very friendly, she participates in everything. They really miss her when she’s not there because she brings everybody together.”
She doesn’t think Dyanna would survive in the Ghana she came from. “I’m scared to take her,” she says. “If I was on my own I could fend for myself. But I have no qualifications and I wouldn’t be able to afford the school fees. She doesn’t speak Ga – the language. I have no family there now. She is so happy here at school.”
Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with misty, rainy Manchester. “It is so beautiful here. I have a lot of friends. I feel like I belong to Manchester. This is my home.”
Ruth works as a cleaner while Dyanna is at school and pays a childminder to look after her daughter while she works in the evenings. “I earn £125 a week to pay for everything. I have to find £10 a week for school dinners. I pay rent, gas, electric. At the moment I am sub-letting from someone. It’s not a place I would choose to live.”
Sometimes she goes hungry for days at a time so Dyanna can eat. At other times she has had to rely on the foodbank at her local church. “They are very kind,” she says.
If she can spare any money, she tries to give back with small donations to charities like Children in Need. When she worked at Tesco, she even had a direct debit to Water Aid.
For the past year, her story has been told anonymously on the lifewithoutpapersblog, as part of an attempt to show the reality of life for undocumented people in the UK. Now Ruth is watching the immigration debate unfold on her flatmate’s television. She says she was terrified last year by the images of the government’s “immigrants go home” vans talking of “arrests in your area”.
Fears of a tidal wave of Bulgarians and Romanians coming to the UK turned out to be unfounded. But the immigration rhetoric remains turned up high.
At times in the past Ruth has considered taking not just her own life but Dyanna’s too so they would no longer be a “burden” on Britain.
Only her Christian faith stopped her. “It’s very frightening,” Ruth says. “But I always hope, if I am a good person maybe they can let me stay?”
Because Dyanna was born in Britain Ruth hopes that eventually she can use the provisions of the the European Convention of Human Rights which guarantee the right to a family life.
Perhaps a court might decide it is in the best interests of the child for both her and her mother to remain in the UK. Ruth says it’s her only hope and she aims to sit quietly under the radar until then.
“I am so tired of hiding,” Ruth says. “I don’t want to claim any benefits. I will take care of myself – just let me work.
“People think all kinds of things about immigrants – that we are like terrorists. But we don’t mean any harm. We are just trying to do what’s best for our families, for our kids. We are just people after all.”
Ruth immediately went home and started packing her two-year-old daughter’s few belongings into plastic bags.
“I don’t have a passport,” she says. “I knew I would be deported. I had to leave my job, and with no job I couldn’t pay my rent, so we would lose our home.
“We went to a charity but they couldn’t help us. We couldn’t go to social services in case the authorities caught up with us. We would have been homeless without the kindness of a friend.”
Ruth and her young daughter Dyanna (not their real names) are illegal immigrants. Since Ruth was trafficked from Ghana at the age of 14 by her aunt, who abandoned her to work as a domestic slave, she has lived beneath the radar of British life without any official documentation.
As political rhetoric around immigration reaches fever pitch with still a year to go before a general election, Ruth, 25, has to constantly look over her shoulder.
“This is how you live when you are undocumented,” she tells me. “You are constantly moving. I don’t take anything – no benefits, not even free school meals for Dyanna.”
Just two of an estimated 660,000 undocumented people living in the UK, Ruth and Dyanna’s life without papers is one of fear, poverty and broken dreams.
There is no access to the welfare state. Ruth has a national insurance number lent to her by a friend and now works in a fast- food chain. A tall, shy young woman, her uniform name badge says “Sheila” and she has to remember to answer to it.
Otherwise, Ruth and Dyanna live law-abiding lives in a Lancashire suburb, going to church, living quietly. Ruth tries to give Dyanna a normal childhood but they regularly move house to evade the authorities, vulnerable to the whims and abuses of landlords who ask no questions.
“Moving is a part of me now,” she says.
With no access to benefits that could top up their income, even child benefit, sometimes Ruth and Dyanna are malnourished. Ruth recently had to turn down a new and better-paid job because again she would need to provide her passport.
Soon they may not even be able to see a doctor if they are sick. The Government wants patients to have to prove their immigration status. It’s already hard for them to be registered with a GP because they don’t have proof of address.
“I understand why people want to send me home,” Ruth says quietly, sitting in a faded roadside cafe in Manchester. “They say Britain is full up. If I was a British person I would be worried too.”
Ruth didn’t choose to come to the UK. She was trafficked here by her aunt, who brought her in on a visitor’s visa when she was 14. She believed she was coming on holiday, but instead the aunt left her with a family who used her as a domestic slave.
Passed from family to family in and around London, she didn’t know her papers were not in order and naively trusted the aunt to come back for her.
“In Ghana, I lived by the seaside with my grandmother,” she says. “We used to sell peppers and kerosene door to door, simple things. We had food to eat. I lived in a compound. But my grandmother died when I was 14 and my auntie took me to London saying that we were going for a holiday.”
In England, Ruth yearned to go to school like the children she looked after but she just had to cook, clean and be an unpaid nanny.
“It was very hard work,” she says. She had nowhere of her own. She slept on the floor in the children’s room and ate their leftovers. “I would like to ask my aunt why she did it.” Her eyes fill with tears. “So many things I have to block out of my mind.”
Still, Ruth dreamed of becoming British. When she was 20 she ran away to live with a friend in Manchester. At the local church she fell in love with an undocumented Ghanaian man called Thomas. They moved in together and had a child. But then Thomas was arrested and deported.
When Ruth traced him in Ghana, she found out he was married. “After that I stopped getting in touch with my family,” she says. “I was too ashamed.” Dyanna is now five years old and has started school.
“She has very good school reports,” Ruth says. Her face grows animated. “Dyanna is good at music. They say she is very friendly, she participates in everything. They really miss her when she’s not there because she brings everybody together.”
She doesn’t think Dyanna would survive in the Ghana she came from. “I’m scared to take her,” she says. “If I was on my own I could fend for myself. But I have no qualifications and I wouldn’t be able to afford the school fees. She doesn’t speak Ga – the language. I have no family there now. She is so happy here at school.”
Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with misty, rainy Manchester. “It is so beautiful here. I have a lot of friends. I feel like I belong to Manchester. This is my home.”
Ruth works as a cleaner while Dyanna is at school and pays a childminder to look after her daughter while she works in the evenings. “I earn £125 a week to pay for everything. I have to find £10 a week for school dinners. I pay rent, gas, electric. At the moment I am sub-letting from someone. It’s not a place I would choose to live.”
Sometimes she goes hungry for days at a time so Dyanna can eat. At other times she has had to rely on the foodbank at her local church. “They are very kind,” she says.
If she can spare any money, she tries to give back with small donations to charities like Children in Need. When she worked at Tesco, she even had a direct debit to Water Aid.
For the past year, her story has been told anonymously on the lifewithoutpapersblog, as part of an attempt to show the reality of life for undocumented people in the UK. Now Ruth is watching the immigration debate unfold on her flatmate’s television. She says she was terrified last year by the images of the government’s “immigrants go home” vans talking of “arrests in your area”.
Fears of a tidal wave of Bulgarians and Romanians coming to the UK turned out to be unfounded. But the immigration rhetoric remains turned up high.
At times in the past Ruth has considered taking not just her own life but Dyanna’s too so they would no longer be a “burden” on Britain.
Only her Christian faith stopped her. “It’s very frightening,” Ruth says. “But I always hope, if I am a good person maybe they can let me stay?”
Because Dyanna was born in Britain Ruth hopes that eventually she can use the provisions of the the European Convention of Human Rights which guarantee the right to a family life.
Perhaps a court might decide it is in the best interests of the child for both her and her mother to remain in the UK. Ruth says it’s her only hope and she aims to sit quietly under the radar until then.
“I am so tired of hiding,” Ruth says. “I don’t want to claim any benefits. I will take care of myself – just let me work.
“People think all kinds of things about immigrants – that we are like terrorists. But we don’t mean any harm. We are just trying to do what’s best for our families, for our kids. We are just people after all.”
WE ARE BROTHERS
Don’t look at me
As though I am an alien or a stranger,
Don’t let the dagger of antipathy
Fly out of your eyes.
I am your neighbor.
Don’t call me a foe, an antagonist or a rival,
Don’t roll up your mistrustful sleeves for a fight.
I am your friend.
Don’t hold this murderous weapon in your kind hand,
Don’t deny me the right to work, to eat, or to live.
I am your brother.
If destiny willed me to be born
On this side of the frontier line,
If my parents wished me
To wear these clothes
And taught me their own dances,
Do we have to be adversaries?
If fate desired me to speak
This tongue foreign to you
And our skins’ color to differ,
Do we have to be competitors?
If necessity decided for us
To live in this country,
In the North, South, East, or West,
Do we have to be opponents?
If I believe in Jesus,
Jehovah,
Krishna,
Buddha,
Brahma
Or Allah,
If this is my philosophy,
My tradition,
My history
And my culture,
Do we have to be enemies?
No! A million times: no!
Please, look at me with new eyes
And throw away your injurious prejudices.
What do you see but a person like you
Who wants, desires and hopes for the same things in life:
Well-being,
Happiness,
A home,
Family,
Some friends,
Some love?
Look:
I walk,
I talk,
I eat,
I sleep,
I dream,
I laugh and I cry.
Just like you.
I’m born,
I grow up,
I learn,
I suffer,
I bleed
And I die.
Just like you.
I’m a father,
A mother,
A brother,
A sister,
A son,
And a daughter.
Just like you.
You see: we are alike.
We are the same.
We are brothers.
Listen to me my neighbor, my friend, and my ally:
I am telling you the truth.
We are the victims of schemes,
Well planned in advance
By deceitful evil-hearted men
Who wished for our destruction.
They, masters of savage forgery, dividers of mankind
Have tricked us throughout history
With well-orchestrated lies
And with treacherous stories.
These intellectually impotent criminals
Have instilled poison in your heart and mine.
Thus, by cultivating hatred, bitterness and rage,
They managed to shape us to ruthless foes,
To merciless enemies,
To cruel animals.
Please, listen to me! It is true. We are brothers.
Let us therefore with irresistible will cross all frontier lines
That the past has erected between us,
Thus making divisions vanish.
Let us with supreme power break the bonds of history,
Religion and culture and run into each other’s arms.
Let us uproot from our tormented hearts thorny mistrust
That was planted there thousands of years ago.
Let us seize ammunition from destructive hatred,
And make war capitulate.
Let us sink the cholera of bitterness
In the affectionate sea of universal accord.
And finally,
Let us unite and march to higher claims,
To incomparable glory
Where peace can blossom today.
Thus, both of us will go to sleep at last,
Fearless of each other tonight.
Major causes of Migration in India
1. Marriage:
Marriage is a very important social factor of migration. Every girl has to migrate to her in-law’s place of residence after marriage. Thus, the entire female population of India has to migrate over short or long distance. Among the people who shifted their resistance more than half (56.1%) moved due to marriage in 1991.
2. Employment:
People migrate in large number from rural to urban areas in search of employment. The agricultural base of rural areas does not provide employment to all the people living there. Even the small-scale and cottage industries of the villages fail to provide employment to the entire rural folk. Contrary to this, urban areas provide vast scope for employment in industries, trade, transport and services. About 8.8 per cent of migrants migrated for employment in 1991.
3. Education:
Rural areas, by and large, lack educational facilities, especially those of higher education and rural people have to migrate to the urban centres for this purpose. Many of them settle down in the cities for earning a livelihood after completing their education.
4. Lack of Security:
Political disturbances and interethnic conflicts drive people away from their homes. Large number of people has migrated out of Jammu and Kashmir and Assam during the last few years due to disturbed conditions there.
People also migrate on a short-term basis in search of better opportunities for recreation, health care facilities, and legal advices or for availing service which the nearby towns provide. Table 12
Marriage is a very important social factor of migration. Every girl has to migrate to her in-law’s place of residence after marriage. Thus, the entire female population of India has to migrate over short or long distance. Among the people who shifted their resistance more than half (56.1%) moved due to marriage in 1991.
2. Employment:
People migrate in large number from rural to urban areas in search of employment. The agricultural base of rural areas does not provide employment to all the people living there. Even the small-scale and cottage industries of the villages fail to provide employment to the entire rural folk. Contrary to this, urban areas provide vast scope for employment in industries, trade, transport and services. About 8.8 per cent of migrants migrated for employment in 1991.
3. Education:
Rural areas, by and large, lack educational facilities, especially those of higher education and rural people have to migrate to the urban centres for this purpose. Many of them settle down in the cities for earning a livelihood after completing their education.
4. Lack of Security:
Political disturbances and interethnic conflicts drive people away from their homes. Large number of people has migrated out of Jammu and Kashmir and Assam during the last few years due to disturbed conditions there.
People also migrate on a short-term basis in search of better opportunities for recreation, health care facilities, and legal advices or for availing service which the nearby towns provide. Table 12
Ruth Asmah's story
Ruth Asmah was working on the till at Tesco when the letter came from her bosses. It said: “Please bring your passport to work on the next shift for an immigration check”.
Ruth immediately went home and started packing her two-year-old daughter’s few belongings into plastic bags.
“I don’t have a passport,” she says. “I knew I would be deported. I had to leave my job, and with no job I couldn’t pay my rent, so we would lose our home.
“We went to a charity but they couldn’t help us. We couldn’t go to social services in case the authorities caught up with us. We would have been homeless without the kindness of a friend.”
Ruth and her young daughter Dyanna (not their real names) are illegal immigrants. Since Ruth was trafficked from Ghana at the age of 14 by her aunt, who abandoned her to work as a domestic slave, she has lived beneath the radar of British life without any official documentation.
As political rhetoric around immigration reaches fever pitch with still a year to go before a general election, Ruth, 25, has to constantly look over her shoulder.
“This is how you live when you are undocumented,” she tells me. “You are constantly moving. I don’t take anything – no benefits, not even free school meals for Dyanna.”
Just two of an estimated 660,000 undocumented people living in the UK, Ruth and Dyanna’s life without papers is one of fear, poverty and broken dreams.
There is no access to the welfare state. Ruth has a national insurance number lent to her by a friend and now works in a fast- food chain. A tall, shy young woman, her uniform name badge says “Sheila” and she has to remember to answer to it.
Otherwise, Ruth and Dyanna live law-abiding lives in a Lancashire suburb, going to church, living quietly. Ruth tries to give Dyanna a normal childhood but they regularly move house to evade the authorities, vulnerable to the whims and abuses of landlords who ask no questions.
“Moving is a part of me now,” she says.
With no access to benefits that could top up their income, even child benefit, sometimes Ruth and Dyanna are malnourished. Ruth recently had to turn down a new and better-paid job because again she would need to provide her passport.
Soon they may not even be able to see a doctor if they are sick. The Government wants patients to have to prove their immigration status. It’s already hard for them to be registered with a GP because they don’t have proof of address.
“I understand why people want to send me home,” Ruth says quietly, sitting in a faded roadside cafe in Manchester. “They say Britain is full up. If I was a British person I would be worried too.”
Ruth didn’t choose to come to the UK. She was trafficked here by her aunt, who brought her in on a visitor’s visa when she was 14. She believed she was coming on holiday, but instead the aunt left her with a family who used her as a domestic slave.
Passed from family to family in and around London, she didn’t know her papers were not in order and naively trusted the aunt to come back for her.
“In Ghana, I lived by the seaside with my grandmother,” she says. “We used to sell peppers and kerosene door to door, simple things. We had food to eat. I lived in a compound. But my grandmother died when I was 14 and my auntie took me to London saying that we were going for a holiday.”
In England, Ruth yearned to go to school like the children she looked after but she just had to cook, clean and be an unpaid nanny.
“It was very hard work,” she says. She had nowhere of her own. She slept on the floor in the children’s room and ate their leftovers. “I would like to ask my aunt why she did it.” Her eyes fill with tears. “So many things I have to block out of my mind.”
Still, Ruth dreamed of becoming British. When she was 20 she ran away to live with a friend in Manchester. At the local church she fell in love with an undocumented Ghanaian man called Thomas. They moved in together and had a child. But then Thomas was arrested and deported.
When Ruth traced him in Ghana, she found out he was married. “After that I stopped getting in touch with my family,” she says. “I was too ashamed.” Dyanna is now five years old and has started school.
“She has very good school reports,” Ruth says. Her face grows animated. “Dyanna is good at music. They say she is very friendly, she participates in everything. They really miss her when she’s not there because she brings everybody together.”
She doesn’t think Dyanna would survive in the Ghana she came from. “I’m scared to take her,” she says. “If I was on my own I could fend for myself. But I have no qualifications and I wouldn’t be able to afford the school fees. She doesn’t speak Ga – the language. I have no family there now. She is so happy here at school.”
Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with misty, rainy Manchester. “It is so beautiful here. I have a lot of friends. I feel like I belong to Manchester. This is my home.”
Ruth works as a cleaner while Dyanna is at school and pays a childminder to look after her daughter while she works in the evenings. “I earn £125 a week to pay for everything. I have to find £10 a week for school dinners. I pay rent, gas, electric. At the moment I am sub-letting from someone. It’s not a place I would choose to live.”
Sometimes she goes hungry for days at a time so Dyanna can eat. At other times she has had to rely on the foodbank at her local church. “They are very kind,” she says.
If she can spare any money, she tries to give back with small donations to charities like Children in Need. When she worked at Tesco, she even had a direct debit to Water Aid.
For the past year, her story has been told anonymously on the lifewithoutpapersblog, as part of an attempt to show the reality of life for undocumented people in the UK. Now Ruth is watching the immigration debate unfold on her flatmate’s television. She says she was terrified last year by the images of the government’s “immigrants go home” vans talking of “arrests in your area”.
Fears of a tidal wave of Bulgarians and Romanians coming to the UK turned out to be unfounded. But the immigration rhetoric remains turned up high.
At times in the past Ruth has considered taking not just her own life but Dyanna’s too so they would no longer be a “burden” on Britain.
Only her Christian faith stopped her. “It’s very frightening,” Ruth says. “But I always hope, if I am a good person maybe they can let me stay?”
Because Dyanna was born in Britain Ruth hopes that eventually she can use the provisions of the the European Convention of Human Rights which guarantee the right to a family life.
Perhaps a court might decide it is in the best interests of the child for both her and her mother to remain in the UK. Ruth says it’s her only hope and she aims to sit quietly under the radar until then.
“I am so tired of hiding,” Ruth says. “I don’t want to claim any benefits. I will take care of myself – just let me work.
“People think all kinds of things about immigrants – that we are like terrorists. But we don’t mean any harm. We are just trying to do what’s best for our families, for our kids. We are just people after all.”
Ruth immediately went home and started packing her two-year-old daughter’s few belongings into plastic bags.
“I don’t have a passport,” she says. “I knew I would be deported. I had to leave my job, and with no job I couldn’t pay my rent, so we would lose our home.
“We went to a charity but they couldn’t help us. We couldn’t go to social services in case the authorities caught up with us. We would have been homeless without the kindness of a friend.”
Ruth and her young daughter Dyanna (not their real names) are illegal immigrants. Since Ruth was trafficked from Ghana at the age of 14 by her aunt, who abandoned her to work as a domestic slave, she has lived beneath the radar of British life without any official documentation.
As political rhetoric around immigration reaches fever pitch with still a year to go before a general election, Ruth, 25, has to constantly look over her shoulder.
“This is how you live when you are undocumented,” she tells me. “You are constantly moving. I don’t take anything – no benefits, not even free school meals for Dyanna.”
Just two of an estimated 660,000 undocumented people living in the UK, Ruth and Dyanna’s life without papers is one of fear, poverty and broken dreams.
There is no access to the welfare state. Ruth has a national insurance number lent to her by a friend and now works in a fast- food chain. A tall, shy young woman, her uniform name badge says “Sheila” and she has to remember to answer to it.
Otherwise, Ruth and Dyanna live law-abiding lives in a Lancashire suburb, going to church, living quietly. Ruth tries to give Dyanna a normal childhood but they regularly move house to evade the authorities, vulnerable to the whims and abuses of landlords who ask no questions.
“Moving is a part of me now,” she says.
With no access to benefits that could top up their income, even child benefit, sometimes Ruth and Dyanna are malnourished. Ruth recently had to turn down a new and better-paid job because again she would need to provide her passport.
Soon they may not even be able to see a doctor if they are sick. The Government wants patients to have to prove their immigration status. It’s already hard for them to be registered with a GP because they don’t have proof of address.
“I understand why people want to send me home,” Ruth says quietly, sitting in a faded roadside cafe in Manchester. “They say Britain is full up. If I was a British person I would be worried too.”
Ruth didn’t choose to come to the UK. She was trafficked here by her aunt, who brought her in on a visitor’s visa when she was 14. She believed she was coming on holiday, but instead the aunt left her with a family who used her as a domestic slave.
Passed from family to family in and around London, she didn’t know her papers were not in order and naively trusted the aunt to come back for her.
“In Ghana, I lived by the seaside with my grandmother,” she says. “We used to sell peppers and kerosene door to door, simple things. We had food to eat. I lived in a compound. But my grandmother died when I was 14 and my auntie took me to London saying that we were going for a holiday.”
In England, Ruth yearned to go to school like the children she looked after but she just had to cook, clean and be an unpaid nanny.
“It was very hard work,” she says. She had nowhere of her own. She slept on the floor in the children’s room and ate their leftovers. “I would like to ask my aunt why she did it.” Her eyes fill with tears. “So many things I have to block out of my mind.”
Still, Ruth dreamed of becoming British. When she was 20 she ran away to live with a friend in Manchester. At the local church she fell in love with an undocumented Ghanaian man called Thomas. They moved in together and had a child. But then Thomas was arrested and deported.
When Ruth traced him in Ghana, she found out he was married. “After that I stopped getting in touch with my family,” she says. “I was too ashamed.” Dyanna is now five years old and has started school.
“She has very good school reports,” Ruth says. Her face grows animated. “Dyanna is good at music. They say she is very friendly, she participates in everything. They really miss her when she’s not there because she brings everybody together.”
She doesn’t think Dyanna would survive in the Ghana she came from. “I’m scared to take her,” she says. “If I was on my own I could fend for myself. But I have no qualifications and I wouldn’t be able to afford the school fees. She doesn’t speak Ga – the language. I have no family there now. She is so happy here at school.”
Meanwhile, she has fallen in love with misty, rainy Manchester. “It is so beautiful here. I have a lot of friends. I feel like I belong to Manchester. This is my home.”
Ruth works as a cleaner while Dyanna is at school and pays a childminder to look after her daughter while she works in the evenings. “I earn £125 a week to pay for everything. I have to find £10 a week for school dinners. I pay rent, gas, electric. At the moment I am sub-letting from someone. It’s not a place I would choose to live.”
Sometimes she goes hungry for days at a time so Dyanna can eat. At other times she has had to rely on the foodbank at her local church. “They are very kind,” she says.
If she can spare any money, she tries to give back with small donations to charities like Children in Need. When she worked at Tesco, she even had a direct debit to Water Aid.
For the past year, her story has been told anonymously on the lifewithoutpapersblog, as part of an attempt to show the reality of life for undocumented people in the UK. Now Ruth is watching the immigration debate unfold on her flatmate’s television. She says she was terrified last year by the images of the government’s “immigrants go home” vans talking of “arrests in your area”.
Fears of a tidal wave of Bulgarians and Romanians coming to the UK turned out to be unfounded. But the immigration rhetoric remains turned up high.
At times in the past Ruth has considered taking not just her own life but Dyanna’s too so they would no longer be a “burden” on Britain.
Only her Christian faith stopped her. “It’s very frightening,” Ruth says. “But I always hope, if I am a good person maybe they can let me stay?”
Because Dyanna was born in Britain Ruth hopes that eventually she can use the provisions of the the European Convention of Human Rights which guarantee the right to a family life.
Perhaps a court might decide it is in the best interests of the child for both her and her mother to remain in the UK. Ruth says it’s her only hope and she aims to sit quietly under the radar until then.
“I am so tired of hiding,” Ruth says. “I don’t want to claim any benefits. I will take care of myself – just let me work.
“People think all kinds of things about immigrants – that we are like terrorists. But we don’t mean any harm. We are just trying to do what’s best for our families, for our kids. We are just people after all.”
Enrique's Journey: The boy left behind
The boy does not understand.
His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do.
Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness.
What will become of him? Already he will not let anyone else feed or bathe him. He loves her deeply, as only a son can. With Lourdes, he is a chatterbox. "Mira, Mami." Look, Mom, he says softly, asking her questions about everything he sees. Without her, he is so shy it is crushing.
Slowly, she walks out onto the porch. Enrique clings to her pant leg. Beside her, he is tiny. Lourdes loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word. She cannot carry his picture. It would melt her resolve. She cannot hug him. He is 5 years old.
They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is 7. Lourdes, 24, scrubs other people's laundry in a muddy river. She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique's playground.
They have a bleak future. He and Belky are not likely to finish grade school. Lourdes cannot afford uniforms or pencils. Her husband is gone. A good job is out of the question. So she has decided: She will leave. She will go to the United States and make money and send it home. She will be gone for one year, less with luck, or she will bring her children to be with her. It is for them she is leaving, she tells herself, but still, she feels guilty.
She kneels and kisses Belky and hugs her tightly.
Then Lourdes turns to her own sister. If she watches over Belky, she will get a set of gold fingernails fromEl Norte.
But Lourdes cannot face Enrique. He will remember only one thing that she says to him: "Don't forget to go to church this afternoon."
It is Jan. 29, 1989. His mother steps off the porch.
She walks away.
"¿Donde esta mi mami?" Enrique cries, over and over. "Where is my mom?"
His mother never returns, and that decides Enrique's fate. As a teenager--indeed, still a child--he will set out for the U.S. on his own to search for her. Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents. Roughly two-thirds of them will make it past the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Many go north seeking work. Others flee abusive families. Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches. Of those, the counselors say, 75% are looking for their mothers. Some children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them. A priest at a Texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their mothers' arms.
The journey is hard for the Mexicans but harder still for Enrique and the others from Central America. They must make an illegal and dangerous trek up the length of Mexico. Counselors and immigration lawyers say only half of them get help from smugglers. The rest travel alone. They are cold, hungry and helpless. They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits and gang members deported from the United States. A University of Houston study found that most are robbed, beaten or raped, usually several times. Some are killed.
They set out with little or no money. Thousands, shelter workers say, make their way through Mexico clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. Since the 1990s, Mexico and the United States have tried to thwart them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, the children jump on and off the moving train cars. Sometimes they fall, and the wheels tear them apart.
They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun. Often, they don't know where or when they'll get their next meal. Some go days without eating. If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel. At night, they huddle together on the train cars or next to the tracks. They sleep in trees, in tall grass or in beds made of leaves.
Some are very young. Mexican rail workers have encountered 7-year-olds on their way to find their mothers. A policeman discovered a 9-year-old boy four years ago near the downtown Los Angeles tracks. "I'm looking for my mother," he said. The youngster had left Puerto Cortes in Honduras three months before, guided only by his cunning and the single thing he knew about her: where she lived. He asked everyone: "How do I get to San Francisco?"
Typically the children are teenagers. Some were babies when their mothers left; they know them only by pictures sent home. Others, a bit older, struggle to hold on to memories: One has slept in her mother's bed; another has smelled her perfume, put on her deodorant, her clothes. One is old enough to remember his mother's face, another her laugh, her favorite shade of lipstick, how her dress felt as she stood at the stove patting tortillas.
Many, including Enrique, begin to idealize their mothers. In their absence, these mothers become larger than life. Although the women struggle to pay rent and eat in the United States, in the imaginations of their children back home they become deliverance itself, the answer to every problem. Finding them becomes the quest for the Holy Grail.
His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do.
Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel and finally the emptiness.
What will become of him? Already he will not let anyone else feed or bathe him. He loves her deeply, as only a son can. With Lourdes, he is a chatterbox. "Mira, Mami." Look, Mom, he says softly, asking her questions about everything he sees. Without her, he is so shy it is crushing.
Slowly, she walks out onto the porch. Enrique clings to her pant leg. Beside her, he is tiny. Lourdes loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word. She cannot carry his picture. It would melt her resolve. She cannot hug him. He is 5 years old.
They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is 7. Lourdes, 24, scrubs other people's laundry in a muddy river. She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique's playground.
They have a bleak future. He and Belky are not likely to finish grade school. Lourdes cannot afford uniforms or pencils. Her husband is gone. A good job is out of the question. So she has decided: She will leave. She will go to the United States and make money and send it home. She will be gone for one year, less with luck, or she will bring her children to be with her. It is for them she is leaving, she tells herself, but still, she feels guilty.
She kneels and kisses Belky and hugs her tightly.
Then Lourdes turns to her own sister. If she watches over Belky, she will get a set of gold fingernails fromEl Norte.
But Lourdes cannot face Enrique. He will remember only one thing that she says to him: "Don't forget to go to church this afternoon."
It is Jan. 29, 1989. His mother steps off the porch.
She walks away.
"¿Donde esta mi mami?" Enrique cries, over and over. "Where is my mom?"
His mother never returns, and that decides Enrique's fate. As a teenager--indeed, still a child--he will set out for the U.S. on his own to search for her. Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents. Roughly two-thirds of them will make it past the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Many go north seeking work. Others flee abusive families. Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches. Of those, the counselors say, 75% are looking for their mothers. Some children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them. A priest at a Texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their mothers' arms.
The journey is hard for the Mexicans but harder still for Enrique and the others from Central America. They must make an illegal and dangerous trek up the length of Mexico. Counselors and immigration lawyers say only half of them get help from smugglers. The rest travel alone. They are cold, hungry and helpless. They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits and gang members deported from the United States. A University of Houston study found that most are robbed, beaten or raped, usually several times. Some are killed.
They set out with little or no money. Thousands, shelter workers say, make their way through Mexico clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. Since the 1990s, Mexico and the United States have tried to thwart them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, the children jump on and off the moving train cars. Sometimes they fall, and the wheels tear them apart.
They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun. Often, they don't know where or when they'll get their next meal. Some go days without eating. If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel. At night, they huddle together on the train cars or next to the tracks. They sleep in trees, in tall grass or in beds made of leaves.
Some are very young. Mexican rail workers have encountered 7-year-olds on their way to find their mothers. A policeman discovered a 9-year-old boy four years ago near the downtown Los Angeles tracks. "I'm looking for my mother," he said. The youngster had left Puerto Cortes in Honduras three months before, guided only by his cunning and the single thing he knew about her: where she lived. He asked everyone: "How do I get to San Francisco?"
Typically the children are teenagers. Some were babies when their mothers left; they know them only by pictures sent home. Others, a bit older, struggle to hold on to memories: One has slept in her mother's bed; another has smelled her perfume, put on her deodorant, her clothes. One is old enough to remember his mother's face, another her laugh, her favorite shade of lipstick, how her dress felt as she stood at the stove patting tortillas.
Many, including Enrique, begin to idealize their mothers. In their absence, these mothers become larger than life. Although the women struggle to pay rent and eat in the United States, in the imaginations of their children back home they become deliverance itself, the answer to every problem. Finding them becomes the quest for the Holy Grail.
Effects of Migration
Migration has both positives and negative impact on the nation and states at economic ,financial and demographic level.
Positives :
1. Supply of labour leads to production of goods and services
2. Provides employment and therefore income generation and leads towards economic upward movement
3. Helps in bringing in remittances to the human resource provider state/ nation while provides support of manpower to the migrated state / nation . This increases money supply.
4. Cross pollination of social and culture along with intellect , skill, technology , goods and services
5.migration also breeds entrepreneurs and increases risk appetite of society and it leads to more startups , innovation and creativity .
Negatives:
1. Brain drain of engineers ,doctors , technocrats and professional from developing state / nation to developed states/ nation and many times results into economic and demographic imbalance
2. Disparity of social economic class where the poor state witness high drainage of
Progressive and aspiring population towards states and nation which are already high on development and progress .
3.due to political and economic compulsions states and nations which spend lots of money and resources to provide education and skill are not able to take benefit of this investment on an individual because of better growth and employment opportunity and future prospect , he/she migrates to other state/ nation.
4. Migration also puts lots of unplanned pressure on existing infrastructure and amenities and resources especially due to huge immigration of unskilled labour to a state/ nation . It also create population imbalance
5. Exploitation , Ethnic violence, riots , loots etc are also witnessed due to social and cultural misfitment due to immigration.
Positives :
1. Supply of labour leads to production of goods and services
2. Provides employment and therefore income generation and leads towards economic upward movement
3. Helps in bringing in remittances to the human resource provider state/ nation while provides support of manpower to the migrated state / nation . This increases money supply.
4. Cross pollination of social and culture along with intellect , skill, technology , goods and services
5.migration also breeds entrepreneurs and increases risk appetite of society and it leads to more startups , innovation and creativity .
Negatives:
1. Brain drain of engineers ,doctors , technocrats and professional from developing state / nation to developed states/ nation and many times results into economic and demographic imbalance
2. Disparity of social economic class where the poor state witness high drainage of
Progressive and aspiring population towards states and nation which are already high on development and progress .
3.due to political and economic compulsions states and nations which spend lots of money and resources to provide education and skill are not able to take benefit of this investment on an individual because of better growth and employment opportunity and future prospect , he/she migrates to other state/ nation.
4. Migration also puts lots of unplanned pressure on existing infrastructure and amenities and resources especially due to huge immigration of unskilled labour to a state/ nation . It also create population imbalance
5. Exploitation , Ethnic violence, riots , loots etc are also witnessed due to social and cultural misfitment due to immigration.
Conclusion
It is clear that immigration is inevitable and as it is an age old adage that Human tribe is nomad so no one can stop immigration. Also, this world of highly integrated and technology empowered has got created due to cross pollination of talent, culture , . And it is a reality due to migration of people from varied / diverse culture, social and economic background came together and optimally utilized and mustered opportunities in different nook and corner of world. However all this progress has happened in not very balanced form it is still skewed towards nations which were capitalistic or had more affluence and overall were big daddies in world economics.. We need to iron out lots of disparities , exploitation poor nations / and so called developing nations with better intellect and we need to eliminate this world order of hierarchy of white , yellow, brown and black .
We have to provide a mechanism to provide equal opportunity to similar skill and talent than discriminating on basis of skin color , caste, community and country . Migration can give significant benefits in times to come if we address above issues.
We have to provide a mechanism to provide equal opportunity to similar skill and talent than discriminating on basis of skin color , caste, community and country . Migration can give significant benefits in times to come if we address above issues.