Migration is the process of moving to a new country or region with the intention of staying and living there. People of the world are moving from one place to another from the beginning of civilization because of employment opportunities, to escape a violent conflict, environmental factors, educational purposes or to reunite with family.
Migration causes increasing nuclear families with losing cultural identity and children grow up without a wider family circle.
On the other hand, it also increased the slum areas in cities which doubled many problems such as unhygienic conditions, crime, pollution etc. and sometimes also exploited.
International surveys have found that approximately 15% of the world’s adults or more than 800 million, want to migrate to another country. If children are included, the number of people wanting to migrate increases to more than 1 billion, or one-eighth of the world’s population of nearly 8 billion.
International Organization of Migration (IOM) reports, globally there were around 281 million international migrants in the world in 2020, which equates to 3.6 per cent of the global population.
The preferred destinations are wealthy nations, with the United States being the top choice followed by Canada, Germany, France, Australia and the United Kingdom. Those countries offer employment, services, opportunities, benefits, safety, human rights and security.
According to the United Nations 2019 report, the United States, Germany, and Saudi Arabia had the largest number of immigrants while Tuvalu, Saint Helena, and Tokelau had the lowest.
Today, in 21st century an undocumented (illegal) immigration is becoming a crisis. In the coming decades migration will become an even more critical challenge.
A recent landmark ruling by the UN Human Rights Committee found it unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened.
The IOM report also indicates, Lebanon, Jordan, Nauru, Turkey, Liberia, Uganda, Malta, Sudan, Sweden and South Sudan received the most refugees in relation to their population during the period 2011–2020. In addition, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Russia and Cameroon are the other major immigrant recipient countries.
Poverty, civil conflict and violence along with the increasing high temperatures, widespread droughts, frequent flooding and rising sea levels are leaving parts of the world unlivable. This has resulted in instability with millions of people likely migrating for their survival.
Unfortunately, governments and international agencies have failed to come up with sensible answers or effective policies to address the increasing waves of illegal migrants, including caravans of thousands, arriving at borders and the growing numbers of migrants unlawfully resident.
The recently negotiated Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration has done relatively little to address illegal migration. Other than fences, barriers, closed borders, pushbacks and official statements, governments appear ill prepared to deal with the growing numbers unlawfully crossing their borders.
With the assistance of vivid factors thousands of migrants are arriving at borders by boat, motor vehicles and even by foot, pleading to enter the country.
Refusing entry and/or deporting them to their home countries, especially when migrants claim asylum or come from failed states have created serious dilemmas for governments.
Also, governments seem reluctant to acknowledge that visa overstayers and unauthorized migrants don’t expect to be deported. This expectation is largely based on the experiences of millions of unauthorized migrants permitted to live in host countries. However, in many countries the governments’ handling of illegal immigration has led to dissatisfaction that contributes to anti-migrant sentiments,
Also, economic, social and environmental forces are influencing illegal migration and population-size imbalances.
World population is also substantially larger than it was in the recent past. Today’s world population of nearly 8 billion is quadruple the number of people in 1921 and double the number in 1974.
Lacking a legal right to emigrate, migrants turn to illegal migration with many claiming the right to seek asylum, in the destiny country.
Of the world’s nearly 300 million migrants, the number of unauthorized migrants is likely to be no less than one-fifth of all migrants, or about 60 million.
The countries have tightened their borders against illegal immigration. Even though, illegal immigration to the EU from January through August 2021 increased by 64 per cent.
In the United States, about one-fourth of the foreign-born population, or approximately 11 million are unauthorized migrants, as per the report, officials detained 1.66 million illegal immigrants, including 145,000 unaccompanied children, at the U.S. southern border in fiscal year 2021, the highest level ever recorded. The migrants were from 160 countries with many seeking economic opportunities.
Many governments tolerate illegal immigration. Reasonable future levels of legal migration will be insufficient to absorb even a fraction of the estimated 1 billion people who want to migrate to wealthy countries. Consequently, future illegal migration will likely be many times greater than today’s levels.
In addition, in the coming decades climate-related migration will become an even more critical challenge.
As per the UN report, millions of people are expected to be displaced by 2050 because of life-threatening climate and environmental changes. Of those, nearly 143 million people in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America are likely to be displaced due to climate change.
Thus, the respective governments have to address illegal immigration crisis currently residing in their countries. And also need to think of millions of unauthorized migrants arriving at borders and millions of people to be displaced by climate change in near future.
Failing to effectively address those and related issues will only exacerbate the 21st century illegal immigration a bombard crisis.
The United States has 85.7 million immigrants as of 2020- a larger immigrant population than any other country. This represents 35.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 26% of the United States population according to the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS).
Talking about Nepali in the US, according to the various community organizers and informal sources, besides the people with legal papers large numbers of undocumented Nepalese are living. However, thousands of Nepalese are waiting to be legalized.
A large number of Nepalese people go abroad in search of better opportunities for a better quality of life in the absence of fruitful local employment in the country. As per the sources, Malaysia is now the number one destination country for Nepali migrants, closely followed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait.
Nevertheless, to meet the challenge posed by illegal immigration, all of the aforementioned steps must be taken immediately to reunite families dispersed due to various causes.
The integrity of immigrants should never be endangered but need to address the problem in any rational way.
(Miss Ranjit did her Post Graduation from the US university and currently based in New York)
