9. Policy and decision making
9.2 Foreign policies and decision makings
9.2.1 Inhibition of technology transfer through immigration policies
Suppression of economic growth, developments and technology inhibition from the developed countries is widely achieved through the exploitation of human resources of the LDCs and DCs by the selective measures of professional and skilled personnel, who are often educated in the developing countries. The most highly selected professionals are doctors, nurses, engineers and economists. [101] Immigration is one of the problems the developed countries are combating especially in late 19th century and 20th century. Migration is necessary for the LDCs and DCs to move over to the developed countries to acquire more knowledge and improve their standard of living. This is natural. As long as one part of the world is highly developed, the other side that is not developed will do everything possible to cross over to the other side. The Europeans were free to migrate to the LDCs and DCs and became their masters in their own areas and had free access to their natural resources, but for the LDCs and DCs to migrate to the developed countries to acquire knowledge and skills, they become illegal immigrants. Really, the Europeans started it and exposed the other parts of the world to it. Restrictions of movement became necessary for the developed countries to combat the movements of the LDCs and DCs from crossing over to the developed countries. The immigration policies give rise to human trafficking in the highest order as the countries that strictly prohibit the LDCs and DCs from travelling to their countries are the most areas where human traffics occurs. The stricter the policy, the more the human traffickers gain advantage in utilizing the opportunity to indulge in their nefarious acts. Today we see developed countries form human right organizations that “fights to eliminate human right abuses and human trafficking” but in reality, the polices made by the same developed countries promotes these atrocities. While colonialism legalized human trafficking in the past, today visa policies legalize human trafficking in reality, though the developed countries portray themselves as fighters of human abuse. As far as restrictions of free movements exists, human traffickers will always prosper.
During the colonial human trafficking (slave trade) era when the developed countries had the need for the LDCs and DCs natural resources, there was no restrictions of movement called immigration laws, but when the need for the LDCs and DCs to move to the developed countries, the developed countries created immigration laws that made their fellow human beings illegal. In recent time, visa policies have been made to stop the LDCs and DCs from moving freely to places of their choices. Some of the developed countries even made policies that requires some of the countries from the LDCs and DCs to present a travelling ticket when they are applying for visa, even though that there are chances of rejecting their application after they have paid for the tickets. At least, they can help the LDCs and DCs through technology transfer so that the need for
migration to developed countries will be minimized. Human beings are termed illegal just as some drugs are illegal. Do the developed countries actually think that they can succeed in
secluding these people after exposing them to the better lives of the developed countries? Do the developed countries think that they can enhance the development of their countries by tapping the resources of the LDCs and DCs and then enjoy their wealth leaving the LDCs and DCs to wallow in misery? How possible do they think that after taking the resources of the LDCs and DCs and selecting their best human resources that these selected people will forget their roots and families just like that? If the developed countries help in developing the LDCs and DCs, which they are capable of doing if they want, then there is no need for permanent migration from the LDCs and DCs to the developed countries. History and nature have made us to understand that living creatures always migrate to a better place for better survival and establish themselves there. As long as there is this gap between the developed countries, LDCs and DCs, there will always be the problem of migration from one area to the other. Example, people migrate to Oslo and other developed cities in Norway from their remote villages in Norway for one reason, because these cities are more developed than the remote villages where they are emigrating from.
9.2.2 The Western perception and definition of the LDCs and DCs
The media coverage about Nigeria and all the LDCs and DCs are mainly the negative sides of the countries. Though what many of these LDCs and DCs may lack in development, they have them in abundant natural resources. Whenever the media wants to cover these places, they go to the remote undeveloped places where people lives in abject poverty and show the world. The reason for using these remote areas, victimizing and portraying the people as poor is to instigate pity on its donors and get as much monetary contributions from their targets as possible through these portraits.
Figure 9: Advertisement picture from some of the charity and aids organizations This is a business and a means of livelihood for the people working with these organizations as
they use the money collected to run their daily lives, pay for their offices, homes, feed themselves and in some cases live extravagant lives. It is also common to see that embezzlement of funds is often in the news about these organizations. It is very common to see the advertisements from these organizations with pictures of children with houseflies covering their faces. It is absurd to see that even when these children are alive, they are so poor and useless that they cannot even chase away houseflies that tries to enter their eyes and mouths.
The fact is that the NGOs and the charitable organizations are using these mediums to create revenues for themselves. They portray themselves as the ones fixing things to get their own incomes by creating and compounding problems for these societies as they portray them as a starving society. The only potentials they see on these people are means of income by portraying them as starved and wretched paupers, and with my experience, no developed country will like to waste their reasonable resources on starving societies or paupers who cannot afford to feed themselves or their children. Considering these portraits, developed countries will be reluctant in considering investing in these countries through technology transfer because they may feel that the individuals who may be used for the technologies are not fit enough for the task. Portraits of rampant starved masses kills the zeal of the developed countries and diminished the will to transfer technologies to any portrayed starvation area. If the organizations really want to help, they should start from providing means of livelihood for the parents of these children, not monetary aids. NGOs and the charity organizations can contribute smartly by being involved through education and providing job opportunities for these people. They should learn from the more effective ways of the voluntary health organizations and Engineers without borders.