Programs that promote orderly migration routes have proven to serve not only to temporarily satisfy the labor demands of thousands of people, but have also collaborated in the development of their communities of origin, while reducing the risks of abuse and uprooting of migrant workers.
This is the case of Arnoldo Chile, a Guatemalan citizen and member of a cooperative who, after having been traveling to the United States since 2016 to work as a seasonal worker, has been able to save, invest, and hire labor for a plot of land of just over three hectares where blackberries are grown.
“I managed to buy land that helps me continue to generate income and in the same way be able to create employment in my community (…) With the work that one gives them, these people can have economically what they need to be able to survive. And that is the desire that I have, to be able to generate more jobs,” he says.
“Without any discussion, the advantages of circular migration are overwhelming,” emphasizes the regional director of Action Against Hunger for Central America, Miguel Ángel García Arias in an interview for Europa Press, for whom the situation in the countries of the region can be extrapolated to other parts.
“There is a clear consensus that this type of labor migration must be promoted,” says Arias, who highlights as a differentiating fact of this type of policy the better economic situation of households that have some of their members working legally outside and even the deterrent effect of leaving.
Another of the people with whom the NGO has been able to speak is Glenda Chiquitó Xicón, a 27-year-old Guatemalan who had her first experience of temporary migration in 2023, when she went to the United States to work for about three months on a ranch in South Dakota.
“I always wanted to go to the United States,” says this woman, whose first salary was used to make repairs to the house and buy a motorcycle to take her daughter to school, while she hopes to be able to open a sewing workshop for herself and a mechanic’s workshop for her husband.
GREATER SECURITY
The main cause of debt faced by those who choose to migrate irregularly is usually related to the debt they contract with the mafias and human trafficking groups they turn to. “I would never have done it with the coyote, since I have heard many stories of violence and all that scared me a lot,” says Xicón.
Arias points out that in the case of people leaving Guatemala, the prices for an intermediary to take you to the United States exceed 6,000, or 10,000 dollars. “These are amounts that, in the case of Africa or the Sahel to Spain, may be less, but what you have to pay is also important,” she adds.
Chile, for its part, agrees in advising against the use of one of these coyotes. “Believe me, it is a fairly big risk. Currently, they are charging 125,000 quetzales (about 14,000 euros) with the risk of not being able to arrive, or with the risk of being deported,” he says.
Following this idea, Arias goes deeper: “We must value what it means for people to be able to migrate and work legally and without the risks that getting on a boat entails. It is common sense,” he said.
Arias also points out that this type of program not only reduces the number of irregular departures, but also the number of immigrations in general. “By having more income, less debt, that allows you to achieve your goal of improving your home, your investment, the education of your children, without other members of the household having to leave to contribute to that goal,” he says.
On the other hand, he highlights that the impact is not only positive on the economic or security level, but also on the human level. “A migrant who has a contract in his country of origin is not uprooted from his family. If he is an irregular immigrant, in the case of the United States it can take up to 13 years on average to return,” he explains.
“You can imagine the impact that this has on families. In the case of Spain it is not so drastic because we have mechanisms to regularize when years have passed since you are in an irregular situation (…) It is not 13 years, but in some cases it can be two, three, or four,” says Arias.
THE CASE OF SPAIN
Last month, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, reached an agreement with the authorities of Mauritania, Gambia and Senegal to promote circular migration programs in order to reduce the arrival of irregular immigration, but also to offer better conditions to those who come to work.
These three African countries join a list of ten other countries with which Spain has been working in recent years to be able to offer this type of contracts at the source. The Ministry of Inclusion estimates that so far this year there have been 20,515 workers who have arrived under these agreements.
“I think that Spain, compared to other countries, has a fairly open management system and I think that is also positive for workers,” says Arias with regard to the latest regulatory changes in migration matters.
“Spain has a lot of experience in circular migration. All the Spaniards who went to France to harvest, for example, and that was very common since the 1960s, were tens of millions of people, and even more Spaniards are going to France to work every year,” he points out.
Arias points out that currently there are the same number of Spaniards who emigrate seasonally, seduced by the better conditions of the French agricultural sector, about 15,000, as the number of foreign citizens who come to work as seasonal workers on Spanish plantations.
“What is the alternative, that the person remains at home earning 150 dollars a month in the best of cases? The possibility of working is one of the mechanisms that helps development the most powerfully and we Spaniards ourselves have experienced it,” he concludes.
