Cape Town, 26/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - One of the workshops at the fourth ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly plenary session in Cape Town focused on immigration. The workshop was chaired by French Green MEP, Alima Boumediene-Thiery and explored a number of different facets of immigration, including the difficulties of immigrants living in Europe. Ms Boumediene-Thiery also stressed migration could be a factor in causing poverty in developing countries when the EU applies human resources policy for facilitating immigration. Migration can, nonetheless, contribute to development, and according to some estimates, the money sent back by immigrants to their families can help towards the construction of new infrastructures in their countries of origin, the funds for which are far greater than the total development aid supplied by the rich countries. This contribution remains very unequal, as the Co-ordinator of the International Organisation for Migration's MIDA Programme, Margaret Kabamba, pointed out: 0.3% of GDP in Rwanda, 4% in Mali and 22% in the Cape Verde. French MEP, Fodé Sylla (GUE/NGL), had firmly contested the chairing of this debate by Ms Boumedienne-Thiery, having wanted to chair the debate himself, although according to the "D'Hondt Rule" chairing of the meeting should have gone to the Greens/EFA group. Mr Sylla subsequently boycotted the meeting.
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