India has asked the UN to make a clear distinction between regular and illegal migrants who cannot be treated at par with legal immigrants, who contribute significantly to the economic and cultural fabric of their host and origin countries.
India’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Tanmaya lal said that Mahatma Gandhi, who studied, worked and lived in South Africa and England for considerable periods of time, was among the most well-known international migrants who contributed hugely to our collective progress.
Addressing a conference on the Global Compact on migration yesterday, he said that most nation states and societies have been built upon waves of migration over the past several centuries, but today it has become a “complex” and “divisive” issue.
“We are talking about the regular or legal migrants here. Regrettably, we find that the current discourse on this Global Compact is not only coloured negatively in the contexts of ongoing large movement of refugees in and the uneven impact of globalisation, but also the context of the phenomenon of illegal migration in some countries,” he said.