Student Handout for Activity 5, Unit 4: Migration, Trade & Human Rights

Arguments against ratification

• First, some states argue that migrant workers are already protected by national legislation so there is no need to ratify the Convention. This is especially the argument of Western countries.

• Some states have only a small number of migrants and don't see the need to legislate on migration.

• The Convention is not well known in some states and is therefore not high on the political agenda.

• Some states don't have the necessary infrastructure to apply the Convention and therefore resist signing it.

• Some states don't want international agreements to interfere with their migration policies, which they see as a strictly national issue.

• Economic instability and high unemployment motivate states to prefer nationals over foreign workers.

Ungrounded fears

Many states hesitate signing the Convention because they think it gives migrant workers too many rights. For example,

• Family reunification is against the trend to favour workers
  The Convention incorporates migrants' families and therefore recommends making family reunification easier; this goes against the policy trend of some countries to reduce the number of migrants in their country, and to prefer "productive migrants", in other words, migrant workers rather than their dependants.

• Granting undocumented workers rights is against the trend to expel them
  The Convention includes undocumented migrants. Although the Convention doesn't encourage their presence, it does ensure that they have access to basic human rights. This goes against the trend in policies to expel undocumented workers rather than granting them rights.

• Not signing is seen as a way to discourage potential irregular migrants
  Several states are afraid that granting more rights to migrants would make their country more attractive for irregular migrants. Not ratifying the Convention is seen as a strategy to discourage migrants.

• Signing the Convention means exposing embarrassing human rights situations
  When states sign and ratify the Convention, how they implement it is monitored. This could lead to embarrassing situations in which their imperfect human rights record could be exposed on an international level.

According to the U.N. these fears are ungrounded,

"as the Convention is not an instrument for more liberal immigration policies. It does not propose any new set of rights that would be specific to migrants. It only ensures that human rights are properly applied to migrant workers. States that already respect human rights and that have ratified other human rights instruments therefore have no reason to resist ratifying the Convention."