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OAS SECRETARY GENERAL INSULZA INAUGURATES SEMINAR ON MIGRATION INFORMATION SYSTEM

Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, highlighted today the importance for governments of having precise information to adopt appropriate migration policies. Insulza inaugurated on Tuesday a technical seminar on the future OAS Continuous Reporting System on Labour Migration for the Americas (SICREMI).

Insulza said at the OAS Headquarters in Washington DC that information in this regard is “fundamental” and represents “an essential first step to advance in any efforts towards improving migration conditions and its effects” in the Hemisphere.

With SICREMI, the Secretary General noted, the OAS will provide the Member Countries “and the whole world” with regional information about “migration trends, changes in migrant populations, gender, age, education, country of origin, the situation of migrant workers and other important data”.

According to initial plans, SICREMI will be implemented in three steps approximately in the next three years. The first step will include those countries with up-to-date information databases and those with outgoing migration flows: Canada, United States, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile.

The second phase will expand to 10 additional countries and the third step will include all remaining Member States. The goal is for the first report to be presented in the first quarter of 2010.

Insulza defined SICREMI as a “special effort” required to “facilitate a better understanding of trends in migration flows and changes in the migrant population residing in each country” in the Hemisphere.

SICREMI is based on the Systeme d'Observation Permanente des Migrations (SOPEMI) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Martine Durand, OECD’s Deputy Director for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, explained the key to the program’s success resides on it being focused on labor migration instead of border control or illegal immigration.

“Without clear information on what is happening is very difficult to actually develop well informed policies or changes in policies” regarding migration, said Durand. “The first building block in any migration policy is to have good data that everybody agrees on and that is shared among the countries involved”.

SICREMI is being developed by the OAS’s Development and Migration Program. Besides OECD, it enjoys contributions from the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), as well as financial support from Spain’s International Co-operation and Development Agency (AECID).

The System will be executed by personnel from the OAS through a network of correspondents in each of the Member Countries that will provide the required information.

Reference: E-080/09