International migration is an agent that drives human development and economic growthstates the Report on World Migrations 2024released this Tuesday.
The publication of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) supports this assertion in the increase in remittances recorded between 2000 and 2022, which went from 128,000 to 831 billion dollars.
This increase of 650% means that the amount of these money transfers from migrants to their countries of origin was higher than foreign direct investment in developing economies.
The study highlights that the upward trend in remittances continued despite the economic crisis derived from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of the $831 billion remitted in 2022, 647,000 were sent by migrants to low- and middle-income countries. “These remittances can make up a very significant portion of the Gross Domestic Product of these countries,” notes the IOM.
Politicization and xenophobia
However, the challenges of migration persist and it is imperative to address displacement crises as soon as possible, adds the UN agency, recalling that although the majority of international migration is regular, safe and regionally focused, the issue has taken a political aspect plagued by misinformation that gives rise to xenophobic phenomena, discriminatory acts and abuses of migrants’ rights.
In this sense, the Director General of the IOM, Amy Pope, regretted that dominant narratives have moved away from balanced and precise explanations of migration, both its simple truths and its complex realities specific to each situation.
Pope recalled that throughout history, people have migrated in search of a better life, to flee conflict or seek safety, or simply to find new opportunities. He also said that currently much of the migration is directly related to work.
Migrants stranded in Yemen.
281 million migrants and 117 million displaced people
Migrants currently add 281 million people in the world, or 3.6% of the global population, while the number of people displaced, whether due to conflict, violence, poverty, climate change, disasters or other reasons, has reached a record level of 117 million in the world, plus 71.2 million within its own countries.
The number of asylum seekers has increased from 4.1 million in 2020 to 5.4 million in 2022, that is, more than 30%.
The speed of these increases excludes many people from regular migration routesforcing them to resort to irregular means that are generally very dangerous.
The IOM warned that these irregular channels receive a lot of media attention and are often used to undermine trust in governance and fuel a twisted idea that is used as a weapon for short-term political gain.
Bilateral migration corridors
Among the data presented in the report are those referring to the links of origin and destination between two countries, called bilateral migration corridors, which show how migration patterns have evolved to become important foreign-born populations in specific destination countries.
The largest migration corridor in the world is from Mexico to the United States, with nearly eleven million people. The second is from Syria to Türkiye and mainly includes refugees from the civil war in the Arab country. The corridor from Ukraine to Russia is in third place.
Migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean
The IOM indicates that migration from Latin America and the Caribbean has been characterized by tending towards the north of the continent. For 2020, more than 25 million had made that trip and resided in North America. In 1990, Latin Americans in that area of the world numbered ten million.
In Europe, meanwhile, there were five million of migrants from the region in 2020, quadrupling the number recorded in 1990. Other regions, such as Asia and Oceania, hosted a very small number of migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean in 2020 (400,000 and 200,000, respectively).
Regarding the amount of migrants from other regions living in Latin America and the Caribbean, has remained relatively stable at around three million over the last 30 years. Most of them are European and North American, with the latter on the rise.
Venezuelan migrants queue for immigration procedures in Pacaraima, a city in northern Brazil.
Latin Americans who migrate within the region
The number of migrants from the region itself residing in Latin American countries was eleven million in 2020.
The disaggregated numbers show that the proportion of female and male migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean is largely equal in the main destination countries. The exception is the Dominican Republic, where there are more men than women migrants.
The Venezuelans continued to be the largest population displaced across borders in the world in 2022, with more than 234,000 registered Venezuelan refugees and more than one million with pending asylum cases.
Peru, Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica host some of the highest numbers of asylum seekers in the subregion.
Disasters and conflicts
Disasters were the main cause of the largest internal displacements in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022, with 708,000 trips. Colombia and Cuba recorded the second and third highest number of displacements due to disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean (281,000 and 90,000, respectively). Most of the displacements in Colombia were caused by flooding, while those in Cuba were largely related to Hurricane Ian.
The biggest trips Due to conflicts in the region, they were concentrated in Colombia and Haiti, which registered 339,000 and 106,000 trips respectively.
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