U.N. Coaxes Out the Wheres and Whys of Global Immigration
For years, as the number of people moving legally or illegally across national borders has grown, governments have resisted United Nations efforts to collect reliable statistics and coordinate procedures governing immigration.

The United Nations estimates that at least 185 million people - up from 70 million three decades ago - are now living in countries other than where they were born.

But demographers say that attempts to analyze these population movements are often frustrated by government officials who try to inflate or to obscure them.

Now, in the midst of an intensifying debate about immigration in Europe and the United States, in part fueled by fears of terrorists crossing borders, the United Nations population division will meet on Thursday and Friday in New York to begin exploring global cooperation on the issue. The meeting is expected to be the largest of its kind, attracting the participation of governments, refugee organizations, volunteer agencies and policy analysts.

``This time, people are serious,'' said Demetrios Papademetriou, a former public policy analyst in the United States Labor Department who is now the co-director of the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington created by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace two years ago. ``There is a different air to this meeting. A lot of people are now making serious investments.''

Beyond what are perceived as problems of immigration in richer countries, there is mounting evidence of threats to peace and life from migrations, often forced, in poor nations. For example, African leaders have said that the long-running Congo war cannot be resolved until Hutu refugees from neighboring Rwanda, now ruled by Tutsis, have been moved out.

Debates over immigration, said Joseph Chamie, director of the United Nations Population Division, are characterized by ``a yawning lack of data, absence of theories to explain international migration, a weak understanding of the complex interrelationship between migration and development, and concerns about the social, economic and political consequences.''

There are no internationally agreed upon definitions of terms like ``citizenship'' or ``residence.'' Nationalist hackles rise quickly in some developed countries, especially in Europe and Japan, when demographers suggest that low birth rates and aging populations may require huge inflows of immigrants to keep economies afloat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/international/07MIGR-WEB.html