Ambassador William L. Swing’s folksy charm and lyrical voice do not hide the seriousness of his message about the realities of migration.
“One has to assume that people will continue travelling through deserts and high seas to reach their goal of a better life,” said the director general of the International Organisation for Migration, who was in Malta on a flying visit.
“So it depends on what point you do the processing. Could European countries perhaps do the processing at the point of origin and save people the long journey, or at the transit point before they get on a boat?”
The IoM backs calls – noticeably from European Parliament President Martin Schulz – for opening up new legal channels for migration between Europe and North Africa.
Irregular migration across the Mediterranean has been in the headlines since the death of around 400 migrants in separate boat tragedies around Lampedusa in October.
Ambassador Swing said he was in Malta to thank the authorities for their part in rescuing many of the capsized migrants in the second of last month’s tragedies.
The contributions of migrants have been overwhelmingly positive
He was also here to “listen and learn” during high-level meetings with ministers and the executive director of the European Asylum Support Office, with the aim of devising proposals that could help Malta to respond to the challenges it faces.
The former United States Ambassador, and United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Under Secretary General, told Times of Malta that details for processing asylum seekers in countries of origin or transit needed to be worked out, but the IoM was ready to play a role in such a scheme if it came to fruition.
Labour programmes for EU member states to plug gaps in the workforce could also be discussed during the necessary dialogue between countries of destination and origin, the director general said, pointing to the ageing societies in industrialised countries compared to the youthful societies in developing countries.
He was confident that the EU task force on migration, formed in the wake of the Lampedusa tragedies, could iron out the details of any legal migration scheme.
But legal migration channels were just one of the possible ways to respond to the irregular migration phenomenon, Ambassador Swing continued, as he voiced support for an expanded Frontex search and rescue mission to help save lives at sea and ease the pressure on southern member states.
The IoM has submitted its own ideas to the task force for consideration.
Concrete “burden-sharing” – the distribution of people granted international protection across member states – would do a great deal to help Malta, said Ambassador Swing, noting that the island was the most densely populated country in the EU, as well as the country with the largest number of refugees and irregular migrants relative to population.
The IoM, as the leading inter-governmental organisation in migration, has been active in Malta since 2007. Among other things, it has helped facilitate the relocation of 1387 migrants to the US and 584 to other EU member states.
“We could actually do more if there were countries prepared to receive them,” the director general said.
He also drew attention to IoM’s Assisted Voluntary Return scheme, which has helped failed asylum seekers return home with dignity, rather than being forcibly deported, and provided them with a small financial grant to help them rebuild their lives.
We could actually do more if there were countries prepared to receive them
Ambassador Swing was concerned that current migration regulations in the EU were pushing asylum seekers and migrants into the hands of illegal traffickers and organised criminal gangs.
Asked how trafficking gangs were able to continue to operate with relative impunity, Ambassador Swing drew attention to the work IoM has done worldwide in supporting victims, assisting countries in writing laws, and helping to train judicial authorities.
“But at the end of the day, we have to wonder whether all of us together have made much of a dent in human trafficking and we have to continue working together on that.
“We have not had the success yet that any of us hoped in terms of catching the big fish, which would be the way to begin to stop it. But it’s a global issue.”
Insisting he was “here not to lecture but to learn”, Ambassador Swing said anti-migrant sentiments he encounters across the developed world were misguided.
Citing IoM’s 2011 World Migration Report, which showed that native citizens consistently overestimated the number of migrants in their countries, the director general said: “There is a fear and mythology that migrants are taking jobs and spreading disease. Most of these myths and stereotypes are false.
“In my view the contributions of migrants have been overwhelm-ingly positive.
“They have lots to contribute if they are allowed to.”
Pointing out that roughly one in seven people around the world could be classed as being a domestic or international migrant, Ambassador Swing said this was an era of unprecedented human mobility, which would continue until at least the middle of the century according to demographers.
“We want to make sure that goes well for the migrants and for the receiving countries.”