How to Immigrate With Dignity

Migration is a drama that tests the capacity of our societies to respect the basic principles of humanity. Its reasons always go back to stories of pain, suffering, persecution, and repression. The circumstances that drive people to migrate are so desperate—hunger, war, violence, extreme poverty—that when they decide to do so, it knows that the path to the better life they long for will also be fraught with danger and abuse. And it is that in general undocumented migrants in any part of the world are especially exposed to acts of discrimination, racism, and xenophobia; it is common for them to be victims of arbitrary arrests, absence of due process, labor exploitation, and lack of access to justice, and in this sense, they are in a position of structural vulnerability, in which the possibility that their human rights may be violated, it becomes almost imminent. This situation of fragility for people who migrate without documents is exacerbated in our country, where the migratory phenomenon is widespread and appears in all its facets —country of origin, country of destination, country of transit and return of migrants—, and where the penetration of organized crime has substantially increased the risks they face.