…it’s all of Mercosur rejecting that draconian, disgusting European “Return Statute”–you know, the one that deprives undocumented immigrants of all legal rights, including recourse to an attorney before the country they’re in decides to boot them out–after a prison stay of up to a year and a half?
On Friday, the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and its associated countries expressed their “firm repudiation” of the discrimination supported by the European Union’s directive of return for irregular immigrants, approved this past week by the Europarliament. The law decrees incarceration of 18 months for the undocumented.
“The governments of the participant and associate states of Mercosur deplore the approval on the part of the European Parlilament of the “return directive”, announced a communication from the Argentine Chancery, which heads the South American union at this time.
Argentine diplomatic sources say that the EU’s measure will be debated at the Summit of Heads of State of Mercosur, which will take place on July 1 in the Argentine city of Tucumán.
Mercosur consists of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, with Venezuela in the process of becoming a full member. Associate countries are Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
In their declaration, the ten South American nations reaffirm their “firm support for the promotion and irrestricted respect of human rights for migrants and their families, independent of their immigrant status, nationality, ethnic origin, gender or age.”
They also emphasized “the necessity of recognizing the co-responsibility between the countries of origin, transit and destination of the migrants,” according to the statement by the Argentine Chancery.
Translation mine.
Xinhua news agency reports that this law is supposed to be against labor exploitation. If that’s true, why does it not punish cheap-ass employers who exploit the helpless status of the undocumented–and render the undocumented more helpless still? How many expensive new prisons will they have to build just to accommodate all these people without pedigree puppy-papers? And how much will it cost to enforce this law in terms of Gestapo police officers alone? And who will be footing the bill for all this? (I suggest the EU hit up the cheap-ass employers, who should be the ones in the jails. It will take a lot less manpower and money to jail them.)
BTW, Evo has spoken out against this nasty law very eloquently, and Chavecito says no oil for any country caught robbing migrants of their legal recourse. Them’s my homies.
Machetera also notes that in all, 14 LatAm/Caribbean nations have now spoken out against this fascistic law. Of course, they’re all predominantly non-white, so we know just how much notice the neo-conned EU will take of them.
