Human Rights in a Globalizing World: Who Pays the Human Cost of Migration?1

IntroductionUndocumented people from Mexico, Iraq, and other countries of the Global South risk their lives every day to enter the United States, France and other countries in the Global North, and many lose this wager on their lives. On May 13, 2003, at least 75 people, mostly from Mexico and Central America, who had just illegally crossed the US border, were packed into a 48-foot long truck trailer in order to sneak by a Border Patrol checkpoint approximately 45 miles inside the United States. Locked in the trailer, eighteen died that day from heat, dehydration and a shortage of oxygen and 56 others were caught by police, one of whom died later. The driver was arrested and, after a trial in late 2006, found guilty of smuggling resulting in death. In the penalty phase of the trial, in early 2007, the jury determined that the driver should be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.2Two years earlier, on February 17, 2001, the freighter East Sea that was carrying 912 migrants, most of who were Iraqi Kurds, was abandoned by its crew of smugglers and ran aground on a French Mediterranean beach. Although the migrants were crammed into holds in unhygienic conditions during the entire six-day voyage from Turkey and 22 had to be taken to French hospitals, none of them died. The migrants were given time to apply for asylum but more than a third of them disappeared without attempting to obtain asylum in France.3Many of those who have died trying to reach France or European countries further north such as Germany, Netherlands, or the United Kingdom, lost their lives in attempting to enter Spain or Italy from North Africa. At least 13 sub-Saharan Africans died trying to climb over the fences around the Spanish enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, in Morocco in October 2005, and in 2006 many more died attempting to cross the Atlantic ocean from the western coast of Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal to the Spanish Canary Islands, or the Mediterranean Sea from Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya to Malta and Italian islands. Precise estimates of those who have died in the water are not possible because many boats and bodies are never found.4One study analyzed the remains of those who were believed to have died during an unauthorized transit from Mexico to the United States between January 1, 2002, and December 31, 2003, in any county along the 650-mile section of the US-Mexican border from Yuma, Arizona to El Paso, Texas. Among the 409 migrants who died, environmental heat exposure (n=250; 61.1%) was the leading cause of death, followed by vehicle crashes (n=33; 8.1%) and drowning (n=24; 5.9%). Male decadents exceeded female decadents by nearly 3 to 1. More than half of those who died were known to be Mexican nationals (n=235; 57.5%) and were aged 20 to 39 years (n=213; 52.0%); the nationality of the others who died could not be determined.5These data cause us to question why people from Mexico and other countries are willing to risk their lives to emigrate. One analyst points out that on the African continent which is "torn apart by poverty, disease, violence and corruption, a demographic and social time bomb ticks: half of Africa.s 900 million and growing population is under 17, and 40 percent live on less than $1.20 per day".6 There is a similar situation for the population in Mexico, 31 percent of which is under 15 years of age, and which has experienced a 25 percent decline in wages since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. Along the US Border, the wages for many workers in the maquiladoras, the multinational sweatshops, are from 60 cents to $1 per hour,7 far below a living wage in Mexico.The younger populations in Mexico, Africa and other geographical areas often believe that they can get better jobs and provide more for their families and relatives by working in the United States, France and other countries in the Global North and they willingly put their lives at risk to reach these destinations. …