Migration shapes economies, cultures, and societies worldwide, yet it often raises complex moral and legal challenges. Addressing ethical issues in migration and refugee policies is essential to ensure fairness, human rights, and social harmony.

Context

• Migration issues exist in European countries - many migrants lose their lives while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
• In India, Migration from the states like Bihar, West Bengal etc have been continued towards industrial states and from states like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilandu, Punjab towards Gulf Countries, USA, Canada etc.
• Migrated people has been protesting in the cities of France over alleged racial discrimination.

Migration as an Asset and Liability

Migration is both seen as an asset and a liability by the world. In order to utilize asset and shun away liability, countries around the world devise policies and laws as per their suitability. Such policies often lack ethical principles. 

Ethical Issues in Migration and Refugee Policies: Stakeholders and Interests

Ethical Issues in Migration and Refugee Policies:  Key Ethical Concerns

• Utilitarian Approach: Policies give priority to the migration of skilled workforce and discourage the distress migration and refugees. 
• Example: Engineers, doctors, etc. are given a warm welcome in developed countries but on the other hand when an illiterate from Syria or Lebanon arrives, they are not mainstreamed. 
• Means and End: Labor economics emphasizes the movement of workers across borders to countries where their labour can be employed more productively than in their origin country. Humanity’s perspective is missing from it. 

Example:

• Nordic countries allowed migrants to cop up with reducing populations and to engage them as service providers.
• Apathy: Thousands of Migrants and refugees die while moving toward their destination place. 

Example:

• Many migrants have lost lives due to capsizes of boat in Mediterranean seas.
• North African migration to Europe is also a relevant example of it. 
• Sensitiveness: At the global level, policies have not been formulated to deal with this fresh wave of Climate Refugees and Migrants.
  • Example: Kafala system practice in Qatar.
• Ethics of temporary labour migration programs (TLMPs): Faced with labour and skills shortages in sectors such as social care and food production, many high-income countries have been actively considering the expansion of TLMPs, including for lower skilled migrant workers. 
  • TLMPs violate principles of domestic equality because they always afford migrant workers more restricted rights than those enjoyed by citizens.
• Violates Human Rights: Migration policies of a country do not comply with the rights enshrined in international laws such as the - Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), UN General Assembly Resolution on the Protection of Migrants (2014), etc.

Impacts of Migration and Refugee Policy Making With and Without Ethical Principles

Way Forward

• Equality and non-discrimination: It prohibits distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference on the basis of a list of non-exhaustive grounds such as race, colour, descent, ethnic origin, etc. 
• States should address direct and indirect discrimination against and unequal treatment of people in laws, policies, and practices, etc. 
• Respecting Human Rights: Nations should refrain from human rights violations of migrants. This includes refraining from arbitrary detention, torture, or collective expulsion of migrants. 
• Participation and inclusion: Everyone is entitled to active, free, and meaningful participation in decisions that affect the enjoyment of their rights. 
• Migrants should be consulted and included in the development of relevant public policy. 
• People-centric Approach: It recognizes that migrants and refugees are men and women who make often difficult choices and deserve fair and decent treatment. They are people with identities, skills, cultures, and preferences. 
• Accountability and rule of law: States should ensure transparency in the design and implementation of their policies and ensure that rights-holders have access to redress mechanisms and enjoy effective remedies when human rights breaches occur. 
• The system governing migration should allow migrants full access to justice, including redress and remedies if they experience human rights violations. 

Conclusion  

• The policies related to migration and refugee needs to be comprehensive and broad in nature. The interest of the vulnerable needs to be given priority. 
• Sustainable Development goals will be achieved only when all the people of the world will prosper.