Record drop of 46% in resident permits granted to migrants, says OECD

Demonstrators hold placards during a protest demanding 'papers, rights, nationality and social equality' for undocumented immigrants in Barcelona, on October 17, 2020. /Pau Barrena/AFP

The COVID-19 crisis has had unprecedented consequences for migration flows, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has released its annual report on international migration.

The OECD says that migration flows were stable in 2018 and 2019, but halted in the first half of 2020 due to the pandemic.

Angel Gurria, the OECD'S secretary-general told an online news conference the economic effects of the pandemic will outlast the health emergency caused by the coronavirus, even after a vaccine is developed and made widely available.

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He also warned that the crisis has impacted the organization's development plans and achievements.

"The pandemic has caused us to backtrack and to lose the progress that we have achieved in so many things. It's dramatic.

"On poverty, we will probably lose the progress we have made in the last 20 years. We were fighting poverty by creating jobs, by greater flows of overseas development assistance and greater domestic resource mobilization. Suddenly, all that becomes very challenging because of the pandemic."

The group of 37 wealthier nations says the impact of COVID-19 may hamper progress on labor market inclusion.

Issuances of new visas and permits in OECD countries plummeted by 46 percent in the first half of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019, the largest drop ever recorded.

Ylva Johansson, the European Union's commissioner for home affairs, told the news conference that migrants have lost their jobs more frequently than the native population.

"It is a huge risk now that with the economic effects from the pandemic that we will have severe gaps between different groups and migrants are really at risk."

Migrant workers are on the front line of the COVID-19 crisis, said the OECD.

In the health sector in OECD countries, migrants account for 24 percent of doctors and 16 percent of nurses.

Migrants are also highly exposed to the health and economic impacts of the pandemic, due both to their representation in front-line jobs and to their particular vulnerabilities.