United Nations: India has asked the UN to make a clear distinction between regular and illegal migrants who cannot be treated at par with legal immigrants, who contribute significantly to the economic and cultural fabric of their host and origin countries.

India’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, ambassador Tanmaya Lal, said that Mahatma Gandhi, who studied, worked and lived in South Africa and England for considerable periods of time, was among the most well-known international migrants who contributed hugely to our collective progress.

Addressing a conference on the Global Compact on migration in the UN General Assembly on Monday, he said that most nation states and societies have been built upon waves of migration over the past several centuries, but today it has become a “complex” and “divisive” issue.

“We are talking about the regular or legal migr-ants here. Regrettably, we find that the current discourse on this Global Compact is not only coloured negatively in the contexts of ongoing large movement of refugees in certain parts of the world and the uneven impact of economic globalisation, but also the context of the phenomenon of illegal migration in some countries,” he said.

Mr Lal said that it was unfortunate, since this negative narrative was not at all helpful and, in fact, hurts the genuine interests and concerns of regular, legal migrants.  

“But the ongoing contributions by them to both, their host and origin co-untries, were well-documented but risks being ignored,” he told the Intergovernmental Conference and its Preparatory Process to adopt a Global Compact for safe and regular migration.