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URUGUAY: Immigrants Immobilised by Ibero-American Summit

Lourdes Núñez

MONTEVIDEO, Nov 3 2006 (IPS) - The 16th Ibero-American Summit of heads of state and government beginning this Friday in the Old City (historic centre) of Montevideo is affecting the normal social and working patterns of a handful of undocumented immigrants from the Andean region who live here, near the port.

As part of the strict security measures for the reception of presidents and dignitaries from the 22 Ibero-American countries, meeting to debate migration and development, there is an extensive exclusion zone in the Old City, which only pre-registered residents and other specially authorised people can enter.

Foreigners without an identity card, and therefore without a residence permit, will have to stay off the streets until Sunday, when the Summit ends.

“Over the next few days, access is going to be restricted, as they announced on television, and since Independence Square (at the gateway to the Old City) is also going to be closed off, we’re going to have to go around it and come in from the other side,” a young Peruvian told IPS.

They have also “forbidden us to do (our usual) casual work, because we’re foreigners, and they won’t let us work without an identity document. We are really fighting for that blessed document, and one day we’ll get it,” he added.

Montevideo’s Old City district is a peninsula surrounded by the waters of the Río de la Plata (River Plate). The financial district, historic buildings, monuments, museums and restaurants all share its confined space, along with the port area, surrounded by dozens of “pensiones” (cheap lodging houses), where many Asian and Andean immigrants get by on whatever daily odd jobs they can get.

Many “pensiones” in large old dilapidated houses are located on Cerrito and 25 de Mayo streets, in the heart of the historic centre.

“As we work in this area, the company has told us there won’t be any jobs these days, because we work by the hour,” another Peruvian who has been in the country for three months, and works unloading containers and moving, told IPS. “Without an identity document they won’t give you work” during the Summit, he added.

This young man works for one or two hours a day for 50 pesos (just over two dollars) an hour. “With what we make in a day, we buy our food and cook it,” but now “we’re practically not going to be able to go out” on the street, he said.

His long-term plan is to get work on a fishing boat in December or January, when the demand for this kind of labour increases. The pay is much better, between 800 and 1,000 dollars a month, but the workdays are “21 hours work and three hours rest,” he explained.

Women immigrants from the Andean countries find employment mainly as domestic workers.

Another young man from the north of Peru who has spent two years in Uruguay said, “While a lot of men wait for a job on board a boat, their wives contribute with their pay as domestic employees, and the men do odd jobs to pitch in. But the wives have the hardest time while we’re waiting for a boat.”

That is why “we hope to get the proper identity document, so that we can get jobs on land and not just at sea,” he added.

Some of these people live in the “César Vallejo” Immigrant House, on Reconquista street in the Old City, which is aided by the non-governmental Franciscan Ecological Centre for Research.

Carlos Valderrama, also a Peruvian, and an activist at Immigrant House, told IPS that “we’re looking forward to this Ibero-American Summit with high expectations, but at the same time with deep concern.”

“We’re hoping for the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families to be ratified, and to be implemented: that is, for the situation of illegal migrants to be regularised,” he said.

The 94-article Convention was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1990 and entered into force in July 2003. To date, only 34 countries have ratified it.

Uruguay is one of the states party to the Convention, having ratified it in 2001 under law 17,107.

The “concerns are about the control exercised by the migration authorities over our undocumented fellow-countrymen,” he said, and warned that “retaining documents such as passports (as has happened in the past) is unconstitutional and violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” So far, there have been no reports of this happening in relation to the Ibero-American Summit.

There are no official figures on undocumented migrants in Uruguay. “César Vallejo” House has started a register of undocumented Peruvians in Uruguay, and has already recorded 180 cases.

According to information from the Ministry of the Interior available on the Internet, the annual number of residence permits granted to foreigners in 2000 was 1,041, rising to 1,631 in 2004. But the data do not specify nationalities except for Argentines, Brazilians, Paraguayans, Chileans and nationals of some European countries.

Uruguay, with a population of 3.2 million, is a country of emigrants, as an estimated 500,000 Uruguayan-born people live abroad.

“Uruguayans must become aware of the situation,” because “if Uruguay does not treat immigrants well, it will lack moral authority to demand rights” for Uruguayans abroad, Valderrama said.

“César Vallejo” House has met with authorities of the Tabaré Vázquez government to promote full implementation of the Convention, which implies legalising migrant workers and enabling their families to be reunited. It has also presented a project to the Peruvian Embassy for a complete register of undocumented Peruvians, and to help them pay the costs of obtaining residence permits and assist them with the formal procedural requirements.

“If we have free movement of capital, why not have free movement of workers with full human rights in Latin America?” wonders Susan Portocarrero, a delegate of the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers.