Sutherland urges ministers to back migration report

EU Justice Ministers took the unusual step of allowing an outsider into their meeting in Luxembourg last week when Peter Sutherland addressed them.

He is not a complete outsider, being a former Irish attorney general and an ex-European Commissioner. He is based in London now, and is chairman of oil giant BP.

He holds a similar position with investment company Goldman Sachs.

However, he attended the justice minister’s meeting as a UN special representative on migration who is preparing a report for the September UN meeting.

Mr Sutherland, in his appeal to the justice ministers to support a UN plan for migrants, quickly made it clear this was an issue of hard economics.

With people moving back and forth between countries instead of immigrating or emigrating, the world was entering an “era of mobility” in which international cooperation would be more effective than restrictive laws, he said.

It was important that the economic realities of modern immigration should be taken into account.

“Ireland is a very good example of the changing economics of the situation, given that we were a country of origin of migrants and now we are a country of destination.”

He advocated a discussion to find ways to compensate those who lose out, including local workers who have to compete with immigrants or countries that lose skilled professionals.

Increasing mobility also results in more money passing from one country to another as workers send some earnings home.

The 190 million migrants in the world will this year send home €185 billion, according to the World Bank. This is up 60% over the past four years.

The sums being sent back to the migrants’ home countries are more than the overseas development aid contributed directly by first world countries.

Some of Mr Sutherland’s report will focus on what can be done to maximise the value of this money.

“A lot of it is lost in transmitting fees for instance. We will look at what we can do about this,” he said.

The US estimated that in 2000 transmission fees to banks and institutions cost migrants $1bn (€790m).

So far, the United States has refused to support the UN initiative on migration and the Japanese too are lukewarm, though Mr Sutherland has said he hopes the Japanese will change their position.

He told the ministers — who did not include Michael McDowell — that he needed their unanimous support for the report on global migration to be put before the UN general assembly in September.

In a highly unusual step, the justice minister applauded him after his speech.