Today is International Migrants Day. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the invaluable contributions of millions of migrants around the world.

As conflicts, climate-related disasters and economic pressures drive millions of people from their homes in search of safety, the past year has seen record levels of internal displacement, rising humanitarian needs and the highest-ever death toll of migrants in transit. In the last decade, 70,000 migrants have died or gone missing along land and sea routes, with the true number likely much higher.

Earlier this month, a UN Secretary-General Report, Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration made several recommendations to help prevent these tragedies. They include establishing independent review bodies to assess and mitigate the impact of laws, policies and practices on the risk of migrants dying or going missing; repealing laws and policies that criminalize or obstruct the provision of humanitarian assistance to migrants; adopting a humanitarian and precautionary approach to identifying and responding to possible distress situations on land and at sea; preventing family separation, including at borders; and strengthening search and rescue capacity at sea and on land in line with international law and the principle of humanity.

These are laudable goals. Sadly, policies in the Global North appear to be moving in a different direction. Last month the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he was doubling the funding of the Border Security Command and giving it counter-terrorism powers to deal with what he described as the national security threat of cross-Channel people smugglers.

The Institute of Race Relations commented: “This linking of Channel crossings with national security risks the further mainstreaming of hard-right messages of hate. In any event, border crackdowns in the UK and Europe, as Starmer knows or ought to know, simply make journeys more costly and more lethal… The only response to smuggling which saves lives is legal routes, which are unavailable to most. The only beneficiaries of border crackdowns are the companies selling security equipment.”

Instead of placing humanitarian principles at the forefront of its policy on migration, the government boasts of the numbers of migrants it has expelled – 13,500 people since Labour came to office.

Like the UK Labour government, the EU has also decided to “urgently” revise current legislation to speed up the deportations of migrants. Following the example of the Italian far right government, both the UK and EU are exploring the possibilities of developing offshore repatriation centres.

One analyst noted: “We live in a continent whose population is aging, yet refugees and migrants, instead of being treated as a solution and a breath of fresh air with a substantial challenge to integration, are treated as a problem, a threat and a security issue. Instead of discussing the issue seriously, we discuss it on the far right. People have been demonized, ‘dehumanized’, instead of lives, they have become ‘flows’.”

This demonization, once the project of the right, has now become mainstream, frequently a convenient distraction to draw attention away from government failure on other fronts. It’s unlikely to work. Most Labour voters place immigration seventh in their list of priorities. In recent years, record numbers of people in the UK see immigration as not only economically beneficial – but culturally too. Even in Italy, with its ex-fascist Prime Minister, more people are concerned about healthcare than immigration. The latter comes top for just 14% of people.

As noted above, healthcare and immigration into Europe are intimately connected. One Catalan journalist put it simply: “Without immigrants there will be no pensions and no welfare state,” adding: “The enemies of Europe are not those who come from outside, but those who spread fear and chaos within.”

Not all European countries are in lockstep with the EU and UK line. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wants to make it easier for newcomers to settle. Promoting migration as an effective way to ensure prosperity, he told the Spanish Parliament in October: “Spain needs to choose between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country.”

He added: “Throughout history, migration has been one of the great drivers of the development of nations while hatred and xenophobia have been – and continue to be – the greatest destroyer of nations.”

On International Migrants Day, we should reject the narrative of most political elites and celebrate the contribution migrants make to our society.

Image: c/o Labour Hub.