Friday, February 18, 2011
Hateful family reunification policies ruin lives.
God, if it hurts this bad having Bobby just gone for two and a half months I don't even want to think about how it would feel to not be able to live together at all. My heart goes out to all the families tonight who are unable to be together because of short-sighted, xenophobic governments.
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Also a current issue of course :)
ReplyDeleteHowever, while in principle I agree with you, I don't think it is a realistic alternative to say 'just let everybody come' or 'it's wrong the way it is done or possibly done'. So what are your thoughts on that or have you maybe read an interesting paper that proposes an alternative way/solution?
Neither of us have advocated 'just let everybody come'. In fact, nobody has ever advocated that. Nobody. Ever.
ReplyDeleteI keep hearing that and it just shows how distorted this issue has become. There is no 'floodgates' anywhere. There is a limited and small number of Dutch people who are eligible to sponsor a partner: they must be single (that eliminates all Dutch people who are married, in a registered partnership, or samenwoning, which I estimate is about 75%), they must be in a relationship with someone without a residence permit and willing to swear to the government by penalty of perjury that they are with that person and will provide for them (again, eliminates probably 98% of the remaining 25%).
People act as if people have not come together and set down the appropriate standards over and over again. The Migrant Workers Convention, The Dutch American Friendship Treaty, the EU Charter of Human Rights, Directive 2004/38 and two other relevant directives.
The issue of two fully competent adults freely choosing who they want to be with simply is not something that we vote on in a free society. In a free society there are certain core choices that are integral to your personality, your development, your sense of self, you core freedom, and your dignity as a human being. One of those is the choice of mate and family. It is absolutely absurd that governments who do not do such things for their own people think that they can do some sort of pseudo-economic analysis, much more often just racist bullshit, to make decisions affecting the fundamental core of people's lives.
My proposal: everyone who has a right to live in a country also has the right to live there with their family. Period. This has been concluded over and over again. However, afterward spineless opportunist politicians back off on it and then try to cheat the international migration system. Humans have never existed as autonomous individual units. It is absurd to assume migrants operate that way.
UN Assembly Resolution 45/158 of 18 December 1990: "1. States Parties, recognizing that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State, shall take appropriate measures to ensure the protection of the unity of the families of migrant workers."
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cmw.htm
Article 5(1) of EU Directive 2004/38: "Member States shall grant Union citizens leave to enter their territory with a valid identity card or
passport and shall grant family members who are not nationals of a Member State leave to enter their territory with a valid passport."
...and so on and so on.
To prevent someone from living with their family is the functional equivalent of deportation. Involuntary deportation of one's own citizens is something only seen in the most despotic of regimes. Yet, somehow so many people conceptualize it differently and tolerate it.
Another extremely simple solution is based on the idea that a decision is only just if the decider would have come to the same conclusion had she not known whether she would be the person deciding or the person affected. In other words, the outcome can be objectively justified because the judge would be willing to apply the rule to herself if she had the risk of being in the other person's shoe. Thus, when the government makes immigration decisions and sets immigration rules, they should have to ask themselves: Is this how I would like to be treated when I travel or live abroad? If my country were to fall apart like the NL did only 60 years ago and I have to flee for fear of my life like tens of thousands of Dutch people did, how would I like to be treated in the country? This is basically the golden rule applied to legal and policy decisions.