A/HRC/56/54 terrorism.35 In many countries, responsibility for immigration was subsequently transferred to security agencies, diverting military and security budgets to border control. 36 The focus thus shifted from integrating migrants as a beneficial societal and economic force to controlling migration as a security threat. 38. Concurrently, many countries adopted increasingly selective immigration policies. Points-based and similar immigration selection mechanisms spread rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s, predetermining access to regular migration and privileging those with higher education, higher skill levels and wealth.37 This has cemented among many politicians and the public a binary mentality of “desirable” versus “undesirable” migrants. Today, immigration policies, while in most cases no longer overtly racist, have created gross inequalities in access to regular travel. In the past 25 years, regular, safe migration channels for individuals from lower-income countries and fragile States have been severely limited, while people from higher-income countries enjoy nearly unrestricted access to regular pathways.38 This limits opportunities for those from lower-income countries and curtails their ability to contribute to societies as regular migrants. Inequalities between countries are thus reinforced, with people in African countries facing the most limitations. 39. It is no coincidence that irregular migration has surged alongside increasingly stringent border controls, increasingly selective immigration criteria and increasingly restricted access to regular travel. Many migrants now turn to irregular travel. Industries such as agriculture, food, construction and domestic work rely on low-skilled labour, even in higher-income countries, and turn to migrants in irregular situations to fill demand and shortages,39 as local workers and those who meet the stringent immigration requirements often decline such jobs. This underscores the need to critically evaluate immigration selection policies and ask whether they truly reflect labour market demands and societal needs. 40. Those from lower-income countries are not alone in facing restrictions on regular travel. Tighter border controls have unintentionally closed off safer routes for asylum-seekers, forcing them to use dangerous, irregular routes, facilitated by smugglers.40 41. Historically, countries open to immigration have recognized the potential of lower-income migrants, welcoming labour migrants from Europe, who were surplus to the needs of the labour market of the time and often arrived with nothing, but who swiftly gained skills, education and wealth. Many success stories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries feature migrants who overcame adversity through drive and tenacity, spurred entrepreneurship and job creation and contributed to shaping prosperous, high-income countries. Today, strict immigration criteria would prevent many such individuals from migrating regularly. 42. The hostile, dehumanizing and criminalizing narratives now surrounding migrants, in particular those in irregular situations and asylum-seekers, demonstrate a lack of understanding of that context. They vindicate severe border controls and human rights violations against migrants. The label “queue jumpers” is particularly misleading, as there are no regular migration queues that most people in lower-income countries are eligible to join, and asylum queues are so long that they are as good as non-existent to most asylum-seekers. 35 36 37 38 39 40 GE.24-07075 See Demetrios G. Papademetriou, “The global struggle with illegal migration: no end in sight”, Migration Information Source, 1 September 2005. See Rodolfo Casillas, “The dark side of globalized migration: the rise and peak of criminal networks – the case of Central Americans in Mexico”, Globalizations, vol. 8, No. 3 (2011). See Hein de Haas, Katharina Natter and Simona Vezzoli, “Growing restrictiveness or changing selection? The nature and evolution of migration policies”, International Migration Review, vol. 52, No. 2 (2018). See Marie McAuliffe and others, “International migration as a stepladder of opportunity: what do the global data actually show?”, in World Migration Report 2022, McAuliffe and Anna Triandafyllidou, eds. (Geneva, IOM, 2021). See De Haas, Natter and Vezzoli, “Growing restrictiveness or changing selection?”. Anne T. Gallagher, “Exploitation in migration: unacceptable but inevitable”, Journal of International Affairs, vol. 68, No. 2 (2015), pp. 65 and 66. 7