November

Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai has insisted that he would not grant legal status to some 1,200 children of migrant workers in Israel. NGOs and ministers from the Likud and Labor parties, including Defence Minister Ehud Barak, have strongly objected to the decision and argued that children who were born in Israel and have never known another country should be allowed to remain in Israel. A new police unit has been rounding up undocumented migrants and 800 migrants have been deported since July 2009, while more than 2,000 have left voluntarily.

PICUM has published a report outlining its “Main Concerns about the Fundamental Rights of Undocumented Migrants in Europe (2009)”. Based on a review of events reported in the PICUM newsletter during the year 2008, the report pieces together a year of European, national and local news issues on irregular migration to foster a better understanding of the main concerns of human rights of undocumented migrants, as well as the multifaceted ways in which civil society throughout Europe is responding to this situation of social exclusion.

The UNDP’s Human Development Report 2009, “Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development”, investigates migration in the context of demographic changes and trends in both growth and inequality.
It presents evidence about the positive impacts of migration on human development and that migration can empower traditionally disadvantaged groups, in particular women, but also argues that risks to human development are present where migration is a reaction to threats and denial of choice and that host country restrictions can raise both the costs and the risks of migration.

Migreurop will organise an international meeting on readmission agreements, titled "Readmission agreements or blackmail to deportations?”, in Paris on 27 November 2009. Please visit http://www.migreurop.org/article1486.html for more information. The Centre for Parliamentary Studies will host a symposium titled “Tackling Child Labour and Exploitation in the European Union” in Brussels on 2 December 2009.

The newly elected Socialist government in Greece has announced that it will grant citizenship to migrant children who were born and raised in Greece but were never officially recognised and automatically become undocumented upon reaching adulthood (see PICUM Newsletter October 2009.) It is estimated that up to 200,000 children will benefit from the decision. As part of the new government’s reforms, unaccompanied children held in overcrowded detention centres will also be released.

In the context of the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and several other UN bodies organised a half-day panel discussion on “Women and migration in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, including in the context of the financial crisis” at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on 4 November 2009.

More than 4,000 undocumented migrant workers in France have been striking since 12 October 2009 and are occupying more than forty temporary employment agencies, restaurants, construction sites and businesses, demanding to be regularised. The strikes are coordinated by the Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour - CGT) and supported by several trade unions and associations, including Cimade.

The Nederlands instituut voor onderzoek van de gezondheidszorg (Netherlands Institute for Health Care Research - NIVEL) has published an update of its ongoing research on access to health care for undocumented migrants in the Netherlands. The report published on 19 October 2009 updates a more comprehensive study published in 2008 and examines changes and trends since the publication of NIVEL’s first report on the issue in 1999.