BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Migrants face a growing human-rights problem that needs fixing.

Migration is a problem; not migrant rights. Migrant rights are already protected under human rights law. If a nation violates existing international human rights law against a migrant, perhaps with exploitative working conditions, wrongful imprisonment, seizure of property, discrimination, or violence, existing international law already adequately protects them. There is no need to expand human rights law to create a separate category and separate protections for migrants.  improve this
The U.N. Convention would make it harder for states to deport illegal immigrants who broke the law by entering the country.

States have the right to deport people who entered the country illegally, and the U.N. Convention would make that more difficult. The Convention gives extensive rights even to illegal immigrants, especially in the realm of the justice system (Article 17). Indeed, migrant activists often see deportation policies as immoral. Yet, a state has every right to arrest, imprison, and deport illegal immigrants. When an illegal immigrant commits a crime (in addition to unlawful entry into the country), states are often forced to pay to keep the criminal in prison, rather than deport him. The United States loses half-a-billion dollars each year this way.[1] Ultimately it's a matter of enforcing national laws, sovereignty, and the integrity of a nation's welfare-system. [1] Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. "Economic costs of legal and illegal immigration." Accessed June 30, 2011. http://www.cairco.org/econ/econ.html.
Ratifying the U.N. Convention would benefit the economies of the countries that have not yet done so

In most democratic, developed countries—which are those that receive the most immigrants—all people share equal rights in the workplace, as long as they immigrated legally. The workplace protections in the U.N. Convention that only apply to legal migrants. Ratifying the Convention would thus not make much positive change for migrant workers around the world. The workplace protections in the U.N. Convention that apply to illegal immigrants are unjust, as migrants surrender the right to work when they come to a country illegally. Article 26, which provides the right to unionize, applies to all migrant workers, but countries cannot be expected to grant illegal immigrants these powers. People who broke the law to come to the country do not deserve these rights. In fact, because they usually come to work, the workplace is the ideal place to discover illegal immigrants. Not only are they not allowed to unionize, but they are not allowed to get paid. Workplace rights do not need to be strengthened for legal migrants, and they should not be for illegal migrants. improve this
Ratifying the U.N. Convention would improve diplomacy between source countries and receiving countries.

Even seriously talking about full ratification of the U.N. Convention would actually cause international tensions. This is especially true in the European Union, which has tried to avoid the issue as much as possible. Stanley Pignal, of the Financial Times, calls migration “among the most sensitive topics in any of its 27 member states.”[1] Since its formation when it allowed for internal migration, the European Union has tried to avoid this difficult issue. Many of the protections that are proposed are very unpopular there, as well as in the United States. These include particularly the right of family reunification, and any measures that clear a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Even broaching the topic of the Convention would cause diplomatic fights between many of the world’s leading countries, who must stay friendly in order to keep a state of peace. [1] Stanley Pignal, "EU faces threat to migration principle," Financial Times,September 28 2010, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/46e8fc58-cb24-11df-95c0-00144feab49a.html.   improve this
Receiving countries should not and cannot afford to ratify the U.N. Convention because of the burden it would put on their health, education, and welfare systems.

While it is true that migrants are poorer than natives, or they would likely not be migrating to that country, it is not the case that they are costly for the receiving country. Immigrants come for a reason; to work. It therefore stands to reason that these people are going to be working and paying taxes. In the US in 2010 the labor force participation rate for foreign born men was 80.1%, much higher than among native born men. They are at the same time likely to be young, and therefore healthy so relatively less of a burden on healthcare, and in many cases leave their families behind so are not a burden on the education system. The typical immigrant in the United States and their descendants represent an $80,000 gain to the government.[1] [1] Daniel T. Griswold, “Immigration and the Welfare State”, CATO Journal, Vol.32, No.1, Winter 2012, http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2012... p.163
Migrants face a growing human-rights problem that needs fixing.

Migrants around the world are often seen as second-class citizens, and this inequality is encouraged by legislation. Unless migrants receive equal social and economic rights, they will never be seen as equal in a human sense. According to Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to leave or enter a country, as well as to move within it (internal migration). This freedom of movement is often not granted under current laws. Human rights also include fair treatment under the welfare state, which migrants are often denied. Without this equal treatment, common myths about migrants will continue to be widely believed. These myths claim that immigrants are criminals and that they steal jobs from natives. The organization Migrant Rights says, “All these myths rob migrant workers and refugees of their humanity, and are aimed at portraying them as less deserving of our sympathy and help.”[1] It is a violation of migrants’ human rights to be treated this way, and they will only be seen as equals when there is a sweeping change in their legal protections in and between the nations of the world. [1]  Migrant Rights, "Fact-checking the Israeli government’s incitement against migrants and refugees," October 1st, 2010, accessed June 30, 2011, http://www.migrant-rights.org/2010/10/01/fact-checking-the-israeli-gover....   improve this
Ratifying the U.N. Convention would benefit the economies of the countries that have not yet done so

Migrants face a number of challenges in integrating into a new workforce, and the opportunities to exploit them can be dangerous. These challenges include the right to join unions as well as inhumane working conditions. According to Dr Tasneem Siddiqui, "In 1929, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) identified migrant workers as the most vulnerable group in the world. Seventy years have elapsed since then, but they still belong to that group."[1] Ratifying the U.N. convention would create specific changes in many countries that would finally make migrants less vulnerable. For example, Articles 26 and 40 provide all migrant workers the right to join and form trade unions, which is banned for them in all of the Arab Gulf states.[2] Protecting the right to unionize, allows migrants to fight for their own rights in the workplace, which is the best way to ensure that they will be protected in the long-term. In addition to the right to unionize, the Convention ensures, in Article 25, “Migrant workers shall enjoy treatment not less favourable than that which applies to nationals” in the workplace. All states that have not already done so ought to immediately ratify the U.N. Convention so that migrant workers will receive equal treatment in the workplace. [1] Daily Star, “Ratify U.N. convention on migrant workers’ rights,” May 3, 2009, http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=86583. [2] Human Rights Watch. "Saudi Arabia/GCC States: Ratify Migrant Rights Treaty." April 10th, 2003. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2003/04/10/saudi-arabiagcc-states-ratify-migr....   improve this
Ratifying the U.N. Convention would improve diplomacy between source countries and receiving countries.

Migrant rights is a major diplomatic issue between receiving and source countries, and ratifying the U.N. Convention would improve relations, clearing the way for states to work together to solve other international problems. The diplomacy of western liberal states depends on the principle of rights for all, which is somewhat delegitimized by the unresolved issue of migrant rights. The International Federation for Human rights argues, “Non-ratification [of the U.N. Convention of migrant rights] brings the core values of the EU into question.”[1] If receiving countries were to join source countries in strengthening protections for migrants, it would send a message that they are committed to freedom for all citizens of the world, and so it would improve their legitimacy in international diplomacy. [1] International Federation for Human Rights, "Europe, It's Time to Ratify the Migrant Workers Convention,"  June 21, 2010, accessed June 27, http://www.fidh.org/Europe-it-s-time-to-ratify-the-Migrant-Workers.
Receiving countries should not and cannot afford to ratify the U.N. Convention because of the burden it would put on their health, education, and welfare systems.

Because immigrants are frequently less well off financially, and they sometimes come to a new country illegally, they cost a lot for receiving countries. Therefore it is not practical for countries to grant them the equal access to health, education, and welfare systems, as they would have to under the U.N. Convention. Immigrants make heavy use of social welfare, and often overload public education systems, while frequently not pulling their weight in taxes. Illegal immigrants alone have already cost the United States “billions of taxpayer-funded dollars for medical services. Dozens of hospitals in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, have been forced to close” because they are required by law to provide free emergency room services to illegal immigrants. In addition, half a billion dollars each year are spent to keep illegal immigrant criminals in American prisons.[1] The money spent to build and maintain schools for immigrant children, and to teach them detracts from the education of current schools, existing students, and taxpayers. This is unfair. Increasing social and economic protections and rights for migrants means increasing migration and increasing benefits that migrants receive from societies. This could be a burden that a state's welfare system is not capable of handling. [1] Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, "Economic costs of legal and illegal immigration," accessed June 30, 2011, http://www.cairco.org/econ/econ.html.
If states were to ratify the U.N. Convention, many of them would not be able to protect their national identities.

A state-by-state approach would allow each state to pass a law that fits its needs, particularly those of protecting its national identity, which is a concern international law cannot approach. Maintaining an original ethnic and cultural structure is important to many states, especially those that are populated by one ethnic group. Is Israel, for example, wrong to term itself a "Jewish state"? There is nothing inherently wrong with its efforts to maintain this identity, even if that effort constrains the expansion of migrant rights.
A faster, cheaper and simpler process

There are cost concerned with processing FoI requests both in terms of time and cash terms.[i] To take one example Britain’s largest local authority, Birmingham, spends £800,000 a year dealing with FoI requests.[ii] There is also a delay from the point of view of the applicant. Such a delay is more than an irritant in the case of, for example, immigration appeals or journalistic investigations. Governments know that journalists usually have to operate within a window of time while a story is still ‘hot’. As a result all they have to do is wait it out until the attention of the media turns elsewhere to ensure that if evidence of misconduct or culpability were found, it would probably be buried as a minor story if not lost altogether. As journalism remains the primary method most societies have of holding government to account, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that the methodology for releasing data should, at least in part, reflect the reality of how journalism works as an industry. [i] Independent Review of the Impact of the Freedom of Information Act. Frontier Economics. October 2006. [ii] Dunton, Jim, ‘Cost of FoI requests rises to £34m’, Local Government Chronicle, 16 September 2010, http://www.lgcplus.com/briefings/corporate-core/legal/cost-of-foi-requests-rises-to-34m/5019109.article
Considering the amount of data governments produce, compelling them to publish all of it would be counterproductive as citizens would be swamped.

It is a misnomer in many things that more is necessarily better but that is, perhaps, more true of information than of most things. Public bodies produce vast quantities of data and are often have a greater tendency to maintain copious records than their private sector equivalents. US government agencies will create data that would require “20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text,” over the next two years.[i] Simply dumping this en masse would be a fairly effective way of masking any information that a public body wanted kept hidden. Deliberately poor referencing would achieve the same result. This ‘burying’ of bad news at a time when everyone is looking somewhere else is one of the oldest tricks in press management. For example Jo Moore, an aide to then Transport Secretary Stephen Byers suggested that September 11 2001 was “a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.” Suggesting burying a u turn on councillors’ expenses.[ii] For it to genuinely help with the transparency and accountability of public agencies it would require inordinately detailed and precise cataloguing and indexing – a process that would be likely to be both time consuming and expensive. The choice would, therefore, be between a mostly useless set of data that would require complex mining by those citizens who were keen to use it or the great expense of effectively cataloguing it in advance. Even this latter option would defeat the objective of greater accountability because whoever had responsibility for the cataloguing would have far greater control of what would be likely to come to light. Instead ensuring a right of access for citizens ensures that they can have a reasonable access to exactly the piece of information they are seeking[iii]. [i] Eddy, Nathan, ‘Big Data Still a Big Challenge for Government IT’, eweek, 8th May 2012, http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Government-IT/Big-Data-Still-a-Big-Challenge-fo... [ii] Sparrow, Andrew, ‘September 11: ‘a good day to bury bad news’’, The Telegraph, 10 October 2001, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1358985/Sept-11-a-good-day-to-bury-bad-news.html [iii] Freedom of Information as an Internationally Protected Human Right. Toby Mendel, Head of Law at Article 19.
Public bodies require the ability to discuss proposals freely away from public scrutiny

Knowing that everything is likely to be recorded and then published is likely to be counter-productive. It seems probable that anything sensitive – such as advice given to ministers by senior officials – would either not be recorded or it would be done in a way so opaque as to make it effectively meaningless[i]. By contrast knowing that such conversations, to focus on one particularly example, are recorded and can be subjected to public scrutiny when there is a proven need to do so ensures that genuine accountability – rather than prurience or curiosity, is likely to be both the goal and the outcome. None of us would like the process of how we reached decisions made public as it often involves getting things wrong a few times first. However, there are some instances where it is important to know how a particular decision was reached and whether those responsible for that decision were aware of certain facts at the time – notably when public figures are claiming that they were not aware of something and others are insisting that they were. In such an instance the right to access is useful and relevant; having records of every brainstorming session in every public body is not. As the Leveson inquiry is discovering, an extraordinary amount of decisions in government seem to be made informally, by text message or chats at parties. Presumably that would become evermore the case if every formal discussion were to be published[ii]. [i] The Pitfalls of Britain’s Confidential Civil Service. Samuel Brittan. Financial Time 5 March 2010. [ii] This is nothing very new, see: Downing Street: Informal Style. BBC website. 14 July 2004.
It is reasonable that people have access to information that effects them personally but not information that relates to their neighbours’, employers’, former-partners’ or other citizens who maythose who work for public bodies.

The right to access allows people to see information that affects them personally or where there is reasonable suspicion of harm or nefarious practices. It doesn’t allow them to invade the privacy of other citizens who just happen to work for public bodies or have some other association[i]. Unless there is reason to suspect corruption, why should law-abiding citizens who sell goods and services to public bodies have the full details of their negotiations made public for their other buyers, who may have got a worse deal, to see? Why should the memo sent by an otherwise competent official on a bad day be made available for her neighbours to read over? A presumption in favour of publication would ensure that all of these things, and others, would be made a reality with the force of law behind them. This would place additional burdens on government in terms of recruitment and negotiations with private firms – not to mention negotiations with other governments with less transparent systems. Let’s assume for the moment that the British government introduced a system, it is quite easy imagine a sense of “For God’s sake don’t tell the British” spreading around the capitals of the world fairly quickly. [i] Section 40 0(A) od the FOIA. See also Freedom of Information Act Environmental Information Regulations. When Should Salaries be Disclosed? Information Commissioner’s Office.
If public bodies do not have an obligation to publish information, there will always be a temptation to find any available excuses to avoid transparency.

Relying on a right of access would also have addressed the concerns set out by Proposition but would do so in a way that would not endanger actual concerns of national security by allowing citizens the right to challenge such decisions. An independent review could determine where the motivation is genuinely one of national security and those where it is really political expediency. The right to information for citizens is important but should not jeopardize the right to life of combat troops.
Compelling public bodies to publish information ensures that non-citizens, minors, foreign nationals and others have access to information that affects them.

Governments have, prima facie, a different relationship with their own citizens than they have with those of other countries. In addition, as with the previous argument, extending the right of access does not, per se, require total access. The approach is also simply impractical as it would require every nation on the planet to take the same approach and to have comparable standards in terms of record keeping and data management. At present most states publish some data but the upper and lower thresholds of what is made public vary between them. To abolish the upper limit (ministerial briefing, security briefings, military contractors, etc.) would require everyone to do it, otherwise it would be deeply unsafe for any one state to act alone. The likelihood of persuading some of the world’s more unsavory or corrupt regimes to play ball seems pretty unlikely. The first of those is improbable, the latter is impossible.
Even the most liberal FoI regime tends to pander to certain groups in society full disclosure levels that playing field

The idea that, presented with a vast mass of frequently complex data, everyone would be able to access, process and act on it in the same way is fantasy. Equally the issue of ‘who guards the guards’ that Proposition raises is a misnomer; exactly the groups mentioned are already those with the primary role of scrutinizing government actions because they have the time, interest and skills to do so. Giving a right to access would give them greater opportunities to continue with that in a way that deluging them with information would not.
A faster, cheaper and simpler process

It seems unlikely that total publication would save much in the way of time or money. If the data was not indexed in some way it would be absurdly difficult to navigate - and that takes time and money. There are advantages to building a delay into systems such as this, if a piece of information genuinely justifies a news story, then it will do so at any time. If it’s only of interest in the middle of a media feeding frenzy, then it seems unlikely that it was all that important.
Considering the amount of data governments produce, compelling them to publish all of it would be counterproductive as citizens would be swamped.

Although it would be time-consuming to approach so much information, it is not impossible to manage it effectively. As Wikileaks has demonstrated, given access to large quantities of information, it is a relatively straightforward process to start with records that are likely to prove interesting and then follow particular routes from there. In addition, governments, like all organisations, have information management systems, there would be no reason not to use the same model. Additionally, the very skill of journalism is going beyond the executive summary to find the embarrassing fact buried away in appendix nineteen. That would still be the case under this model, it would just be easier.
It is reasonable that people have access to information that effects them personally but not information that relates to their neighbours’, employers’, former-partners’ or other citizens who maythose who work for public bodies.

There are, of course some costs to having a truly open and accountable government, but an effective right of access would allow much of that information to be made available. After all what the public sector bodies are paying in commercial transactions is of great interest to the public. If public bodies are getting a particularly good rate from suppliers, it might well raise the question of “Why?” For example, are they failing to enforce regulations on a particular supplier in return for a good price. In that instance, their other customers and their competitors would seem to have every right to know.