Hearing of the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission) (As Released by the Helsinki Commission) - Crossing Borders, Keeping Connected: Women, Migration and Development in the Osce Region

Interview

Hearing of the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission) (As Released by the Helsinki Commission) - Crossing Borders, Keeping Connected: Women, Migration and Development in the Osce Region

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REP. GWEN MOORE (D-WI): Yes, Tori is here from Memphis, Tennessee with Girls, Inc. And this is a great way to train women for leadership roles, to have them come and spend the day with the members of Congress.

I just want to commend the president of the Helsinki Commission, Mr. Hastings, for his outstanding stewardship and to -- he really has focused on gender equality and gender issues throughout his stewardship, not only as the president of the Helsinki Commission, but as a past president of OSCE.

And, of course, my dear colleague, Hilda Solis -- her vice chairmanship of Human Needs Committee of the OSCE. I want to thank them for really calling this briefing, this hearing, together today.

I'm a member of -- I'm very interested in OSCE. And I have, of course, traveled with them. More particularly, I'm a member of the financial services committee. And I have been appointed as part of the parliamentary network on the World Bank.

And so I am very, very interested in hearing from you what the impact of international migration remittances have, not only on issues -- you know, brain drain, or perhaps strain from receiving companies -- but what the World Bank research has shown about the spurring of development from female migration -- very interested in hearing any particular information that you might have regarding the economics of migration.

Thanks to you again for inviting me.

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REP. MOORE: Well, thank you so much, Mr. President.

This has been a very fascinating discussion. And my brain has been sort of buzzing, because I can't decide whether migration is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, it seems to be the perils in migration for children. Some of the materials and testimony we've had sort of indicate that when children migrate with women, there are problems with educational opportunity often. Street children -- we didn't talk about that specifically. But at the same time, there are remittances that places like Moldova are very, very dependent upon.

I have a lot of questions. But I don't want to hog all the time. But I'm going to start with Dr. Orozco. I don't know how to turn this off.

REP. HASTINGS: There's a question coming in. (Laughter.)

REP. MOORE: Yes. Okay.

Dr. Orozco, you've done a lot of work in your studies on remittances.

And so I wanted to know, particularly since women -- the migration patterns for women, tend to be East Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and Central Asia and Latin America, to your -- perhaps there are a lot of Muslim women who are migrating. I'm wondering how has our post-9/11 anti-money-laundering restrictions -- what impact that's had on migrants to remit money.

MR. OROZCO: Thank you. You know, we work on migration all the time. And we struggle with the issue -- the normative aspect of whether migration is good and bad. And we are right at the conclusion that we must look at it from a policy perspective, and a normative perspective. And my analogy is to ask the question whether commuting is good or bad for families and societies.

And, you know, commuting -- (inaudible) -- is a form of migration. You have this mobilization of people through outside of urban areas, for example.

REP. MOORE: OK.

MR. OROZCO: But on the issue of 9/11, I think it has posed a number of challenges, especially for money transfer companies; because the regulatory environment has been more strict on international foreign currency payments, in a way that the banking institutions, that's all the accounts for money transfers to operate on the back-end process have received sometimes not mixed signals, but strong signals from the U.S. government saying that money transfers are to be considered high-risk.

And then if you look at the place where the high risk is located, it's in places, in countries, where there is an ideological U.S. foreign policy component. So you are likely to, for example, scrutinize more the behavior of the Pakistani and Afghani person permitting than a Somali. I mean, the Somalian case that is a sad case of so much discrimination to a large extent of Somalians in the U.S. trying to remit formally through Western Union, for example, is not allowed.

REP. MOORE: What about in the OSCE area?

MR. OROZCO: The OSCE area, the pattern is not the -- the patterning of the risk layer is not as high as it is here. On the other hand, even though I'm critical of the U.S. government issuing risk, I think in this country, anti-money-laundering regulatory environments are very primitive, very poor. And compliance doesn't exist.

For example, many of these countries don't even have laws for anti-money laundering. If you talk to the banks paying remittances, they have no idea how to identify what constitutes a suspicious activity. They tell you well, it is under $3,000. We flag the transaction. But you can buy an AK-47 for $50.

REP. MOORE: Yes.

MR. OROZCO: So it's an issue that you have to look at outside of whether it is Muslim or not descended, because that actually can bias your perspective. That can be Manuel Orozco sending remittances from Moscow to -- (inaudible). I mean, I can be doing some criminal activity and not flag.

So that issue is important to look into. It pertains to gender. The reality is that, if there are restrictions, women will be as likely as men to resort to informal networks. And informal networks are strong in all of these regions, partly because the infrastructure is poor, because also the regulatory environment only allow banks to pay remittances.

And if, for example, a country like Azerbaijan -- 60 percent of the country is poor and rural. And you only have banks that do not go to rural areas. Same thing with Moldova: a very good banking system, but the savings and -- (inaudible) -- associations that operate in Moldova in rural areas do not have the possibility to pay from it. So that encourages informality. And that's an issue that we need to pay attention.

REP. MOORE: Just to follow up with one more question, Mr. Chairman.

I'm looking at a data from the World Bank research programs. And I just am amazed by their research about the migration flows, Dr. Martin and Dr. Orozco. It says the gender composition of migration flows to the main destination countries in the north. And they differ by region. Flows from Africa, South Asia and the Middle East tend to be male, while flows from East Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Central Asia and Latina American and the Caribbean tend to be female.

Do we know why that is? And where are they going? It didn't really say where they were going? But do we know why that is?

MS. MARTIN: Usually migration occurs through family and labor recruiter networks. And so you end up that if it's -- and employment is gendered. So if you have organizations that are recruiting workers for construction and bringing them to Germany, when Berlin was being reconstructed, they're going to be male. And likely, they're going to be looking for where those migration patterns are.

On the other hand, if you're looking for domestic workers or looking for nurses, you're going to go to the Philippines. And it's going to be female. So in the Philippines, 70 percent is the -- those who migrate from the Philippines are female.

Mexico is -- much of the migration now, unfortunately, is illegal. And so it's more likely to be men who will initially take that risk in terms of migration. Even across the border with Mexico, if you look at apprehension figures, those who cross between ports of entry, through the desert or the mountains, are overwhelmingly male. Those who try to use fraudulent documents coming through ports of entry are predominantly female.

So you do get variations even from the same country in terms of what type of work they're coming for; but also what the possible modes of migration are.

REP. MOORE: Just in terms of the United States, there seems to be some suggestion that male migrants to the United States are more successful in labor force participation and integration than females are; and that there are more catastrophic problems for women who come to the United States. Is that...

MS. MARTIN: I would certainly not characterize it in that way. I think because a lot of our migration is initially still male migration coming in because there are needs in the job market, the men may tend to have higher employment rates and higher labor participation rates. They're actually higher in many cases than natives are.

The women are still more likely to be following to join, often coming from countries where there isn't a high level of female labor force participation. And so their labor force rates are going to be lower. Actually once in the labor force, very often their employment rates are higher than men, because they're able to get jobs. But the chances are they're not going to look for them unless it's absolutely essential in terms of the family household strategy.

So I don't think that female migration poses an economic harm to the United States -- (inaudible).

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